Mr. Maurice Neligan:

I have worked in both public and private sector as a consultant in Tallaght for eight years before I moved into whole-time private practice. I have a view of the positives and the negatives of both sides.

The hospitals did work very well and stepped up, especially in my experience at the Beacon Hospital.

In the Beacon Hospital, we had consultants who moved over from St. James's and Tallaght hospitals to provide non-urgent Covid care to cancer patients. My colleague, Dr. John Reynolds, did many oesophagectomies and Dr. Terry Boyle brought a lot of public cancer patients over to deal with significant breast cancer issues. That seemed to work very well. That was the majority of the work going on within the hospital. I spoke to both consultants and they said it was a very good operation for them. I cannot speak on behalf of the private hospitals.