Dr. Colm O'Reardon:

We will bring the it to the Minister. We need to be cognisant of the fact that the negotiations between private nursing homes and the National Treatment Purchase Fund are commercial negotiations between commercial operators, on the one hand, and the NTPF, on the other.

It is a technical arena but is also an intensely commercial arena. We would have to be extremely careful about introducing changes into that process because we have to be mindful of value for money for the taxpayer.