Matt Shanahan (Waterford, Independent) | Oireachtas source

With respect to the payments, in the period of the three months the premium income that will have been paid over to private health insurers is approximately €700 million. The rebate that has come back is about €180 million. That is €520 million of moneys that could have been put into the private hospitals to take account of the efficiency that was there, aside from the fact that consultants were essentially blocked out. I am all in favour of a single-tier health service but the issue is with efficiency and costs. It has to be questioned how we put a contract in place for €115 million a month, yet we were working off bed capacity of 20% or 30% and elective capacity that fell way short of that, particularly in the early months.