Mr. Bernard Gloster:

Yes. I met with the Private Hospitals Association, as I undertook to do last March, to try to arrive at a position in which we would know what would be available to utilise for the period ahead, in particular in the winter. I met the association and I undertook to come back to it at the end of June with a position.

We were slightly late, by a couple of weeks. I would not say that was by any means a show-stopper. What we have gone back to it with, what we have put to it and what we are issuing formally next week is a procurement framework. The purpose of that is, first, to continue using the 160 beds per day up to the end of next February and, second, for the private hospitals to indicate to us in that framework how much capacity they would like to make available to us for the surge period of November, December, January and February.

To be fair, the Government and the Department have not, despite our financial challenges, put a stricture on me for that four-month period because we have an improving trolley position but it is going to take us some time to get there. The private hospitals have indicated this week, and they are entitled to their view, that that is not consistent with what they need or want to do or are able to do. Their preference would be to have a long-term purchasing arrangement guaranteed from us and obviously that would be connected to investment in building new beds for them and so on. We are not in a position until after next February to see what the impact and benefits of private hospital beds are to us outside of surgery - surgery and medicine beds are different - as well as the impact and benefit to the public interest and to our overall public hospital challenges. At the end of next February, we will make a decision as to whether we need a longer term relationship to secure private beds. We are spending serious amounts of money on private beds every day this year.