Stephen Donnelly (Wicklow, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I thank all of the witnesses for coming to the committee. I thank their respective members for the Trojan work they have done over the past months. It has been quite extraordinary to see the level of skill and dedication as an entire clinical system geared up for a disease we had no idea how to treat when we did not know what it would do to our population. It has been an incredible show of skill, professionalism and dedication across the clinical community. I thank all of the witnesses' association members for everything they have done and continue to do.

I believe that taking over the private hospitals was the absolutely the right thing to do. It was a bold, brave decision to deal with the surge. Once the surge did not happen, however, they should have been given back pretty much straight away. It is my sense that the new rationale for holding on to them to use as additional capacity has been an implementation disaster. It was always going to be very difficult. For June, I do not understand why the contract was not ended last week. I cannot find anybody who believes that the contract makes any sense now for patients, be they public or private or anyone else. In his opening statement, Mr. Varley stated that some 250,000 operations under general anaesthetic are done per year in the private system. That is approximately 21,000 per month, which is a lot. It is two in every five surgeries performed under general anaesthetic in the State in any given month. Given that this deal means we are getting about half of what we should be getting from the private system, does Mr. Varley believe it reasonable to say that continuing this contract for June means that approximately 10,000 patients - which is a ballpark figure - who need surgery under general anaesthetic will now not get that surgery?