Stephen Donnelly (Wicklow, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I share the Deputy's concern entirely. For example, we have paediatric surgeons who do not have sufficient operating theatre time. There are children who need to be operated on and we have doctors who want to operate on them and they cannot get access to operating theatres. It is not acceptable. We are doing a few things at the same time. We are increasing the number of operating theatres. We also have to look at how often those operating theatres are open. In too many of our hospitals the operating theatre is open from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. from Monday to Friday. In private hospitals, the operating theatres are open from 7 a.m. to 7 p.m. and they are opening them on Saturdays and Sundays. While I do not have data to verify this, I consistently hear from surgeons that throughput in some of the private hospital operating theatres are simply higher for operational reasons.