Mr. Marcus Keane:

It depends. It usually involves a certain number of visits to the hospital. There might be people coming to do tests during the treatment process and they need to come up to hospital and get their medication through the hospital pharmacy. That itself is a barrier. There needs to be wider access generally in the community. That is one part of it. A person in the west might be coming up to Dublin three or four times over the course of the treatment. Having to travel for treatment also has an impact on people's lives. There are quotes in the report from people on this. If someone is travelling for treatment it is not a case of just getting on a bus outside their house and then getting off outside the hospital. They are getting up at 5.30 in the morning to get a bus, then a train and then a taxi to get to the hospital and then come back again. It is a multiplier effect in that regard. The further people are from hospital-based care, the more difficult it is to access that. So much care for hepatitis C is still based in the hospital environment and that is why there needs to be a push to make things much more accessible in the community, delivered close to where people live.