Mr. Brian Fitzgerald:

I will finish on the last couple of areas. There was a question about intensive care, and it is an interesting area. There is lots of capacity in intensive care in the private system, particularly in Dublin, and there are cases today of patients being transferred to Belfast from public hospitals. In fact, there are patients I am aware of in public hospitals in medical beds that should be in intensive care for the proper treatment. Some of these patients have health insurance, but their health insurance does not pay the full cost of ICU, so there is a supplement required. The families, I am sure, cannot pay the supplements. It is an interesting topic. In my previous role I transferred patients to intensive care in private hospitals. If the committee is really interested in that area, I would suggest it talks to Dr. Stephen Frohlich, who is an intensivist in Blackrock Clinic. He is well regarded, and he has written extensively on ICU in Ireland.

The last issue is hospital in-patient enquiry, HIPE. We are not required to be a part of HIPE. We did endeavour in our hospital to practice HIPE, and I know other colleagues did as well. The problem is that there is a lot of overheads associated with employing coders, and we are not funded for that. I think it will come in time for the whole system, but it is an administrative cost which is overburdening, to be honest.