John McGuinness (Carlow-Kilkenny, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

---- the State Claims Agency, and the fact that the letter had informed those concerned that if the consultant had not signed the type A contract, the tests would not be processed. Mr. Breslin says that was fixed up in 48 hours but it does bring about a situation where there is a growing mistrust between the consultants and the Department. That was reflected again in the context of the contract itself. Some consultants wrote to us and told us that the type B contract would have cost far less than the type A contract and done the same job. I cannot ignore these comments from consultants but I am not pointing a finger at Mr. Breslin or the HSE. I am simply saying there is a staggering contradiction in terms of the witnesses as they present to us and how they understand what has happened.

The consultants' representatives this morning informed the committee that they had written to the HSE and the Department of Health regarding the contract and how matters were progressing and they had received no written reply. They told us that there were 600 consulting rooms in place and the officials ignored all of this. I am not saying they are right and Mr. Breslin is wrong. I am simply saying that is what was said.

To Mr. Woods I point out that a witness this morning highlighted the serious difficulties relating to telemedicine and dealing with those affected by mental health issues. In a separate letter from a consultant, they talk about the serious mental health issues and the well-being of patients now emerging from Covid-19 and the need for a direct one-to-one consultation. They are telling us that telemedicine will not work.

Another witness this morning told us that the system of technology being used is abysmal. He said that if we went back to - I do not know whether he said the 1800s - that we would probably have the same thing in place, recording matters by manually entering the information. That contradicts what Mr. Woods said earlier. There are a number of other contradictions. Why has such a difference emerged? If the parties were close together, moving towards taking charge of the private hospitals and if they understood what was going on, there would have been a greater and more significant cross-use in terms of public and private healthcare.

Finally, we were told this morning that 1 million patients have been affected by the cancellation of appointments and procedures.