Mr. Liam Woods:

No, they will not. Private hospitals are seeing patients now, as we discussed. I think the Deputy is referring specifically to delays in access to outpatients. I would remind him that half of all pure private consultants, of which it is estimated there are just under 600, are not part of the arrangement. They presumably are seeing their patients.

The other consultants who have signed into this arrangement can see their patients in the context of the heads of terms in place. Accordingly, there is not a reason why there is an incapacity to see patients. There is a disruptive effect of Covid, to which the Deputy has referred. That has had an impact, both on patients' own choices and on service provision in the recent period. As the Deputy rightly said, in the public system, where there are 3,200 consultants, our experience has been that there has been a significant fall-off in both outpatient and emergency department attendances. These are now, thankfully, returning to more normal numbers. The key point is that, in advance of this arrangement coming into place, there was a significant fall-off in both public and private systems as the impact of Covid came more into the public consciousness and impacted hospitals.

Of course, our priority is to use the remaining period of this arrangement and the wider public system, which has 11,000 inpatient beds within it, to provide the services that need to be provided. A major challenge for us, not just in cancer care but across all services, is to catch up with what have been growing demands for care, as well as a pent-up demand for access to outpatient and inpatient care.