Oireachtas Joint and Select Committees

Wednesday, 18 January 2017

Select Committee on the Future of Healthcare

Health Service Reform: Private Hospitals Association

9:00 am

Mr. Brian Fitzgerald:

They do in the case of neurosurgery. I am not aware that they fund very complex surgery in the case of transplantation. There are three points. This affects a small number of patients and it is not a good clinical service to offer it. I will give an example from Europe. I went to the Karolinska institute in Sweden, which is a fantastic hospital and institution, and it needs at least 250 pancreatic transplants per year to justify research-----