Stephen Donnelly (Wicklow, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I would like to thank our witnesses. I will start with two questions. It was exactly the right decision at the start, but the secondary rationale, which was around maintaining capacity, has not worked at all. It should have been ended as soon as that became clear.

At the moment, we are essentially using public money to treat private patients in private hospitals by private consultants. My first question is why are we not using the public money to treat public patients with the spare capacity and letting the insurance companies continue to pay for the ongoing work for private patients, which is still happening anyway. My second question is why was the contract not ended sooner. I understand the contract was up until the end of June but all contracts can be negotiated by agreement.

It was estimated this morning in this committee that the ongoing reduced capacity in the private system for June alone will mean that approximately 10,000 men, women and children will not get surgery under general anaesthetic, including both public and private patients. This is an enormous human cost for continuing with a contract that we know is not working. Did the Department engage with the private providers to see if the contract could be wrapped up sooner, given that clearly it is not doing what we all hoped it would do?