Ms Catherine Donohoe:

On the socio-economic background, we do not collect that type of information simply because we would have no right to for the purposes of processing an application. However, when we talk to patients, my opinion is that the majority of them are from middle to lower class socio-economic groups. They do not have health insurance, in the main. They are probably almost all borrowing the money, either from credit unions, banks or relatives. The two main ones that come up are relatives and the credit union. That is where they are getting the money.

By way of explaining that, I will mention two typical patients. One would be a cataract patient. It could be somebody in their 70s or 80s living in a rural area with no access to services and usually on a waiting list. A patient like that would be waiting two or three years to get access to a cataract. Such a period out of one's life at 70 or 80 years of age has a huge impact on the quality of life for the span one has left. I am not trying to make derogatory remarks towards older people but we should appreciate the impact on older people in particular that lack of timely healthcare has. For somebody like that, once they have the cataract procedures, they are able to drive again so they become independent and can live their lives. It has a huge impact. The other typical person, particularly with Covid, tends to be, let us say, a carpenter who has a knee pain or hip pain. They are off work because of Covid so are using the opportunity to access healthcare while it is not interfering with the ability to work. Those are the two types of patients and they are not higher socio-economic group patients.

PDFORRA's scheme is brilliant. It has organised with Kingsbridge Private Hospital - not that I support any individual provider in Northern Ireland - that the members of the PDFORRA medical assistance scheme, PMAS, have access to healthcare at the same cost that the patient will be reimbursed by us, so the patient does not have a shortfall. The patient borrows the money if they do not have the funds and, when they are reimbursed, because they have negotiated prices with Kingsbridge, they get full reimbursement and suffer no economic loss, nor does the HSE so it is win-win. Mr. Quigley will be on later and will give some case studies on how that has impacted their members