David Cullinane (Waterford, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

As the party negotiating with private hospitals, I would have assumed the HSE would have sought those figures. Why were they not available? When we get into the nuts and bolts, the fundamentals of this deal, it was with private hospitals. Mr. Breslin will know, as he and I have soldiered alongside one another on the Committee of Public Accounts, that the Comptroller and Auditor General will always say that a cost-benefit analysis is hugely important when taking big decisions that cost taxpayers a lot of money. There may well be a good reason that was not done, and Mr. Breslin can answer on that, but what he is saying is that, as part of this negotiation, no cost-benefit analysis was carried out.