Oireachtas Joint and Select Committees

Thursday, 16 September 2021

Public Accounts Committee

Financial Statement 2020 and Related Matters: HSE

9:30 am

Mr. Stephen Mulvany:

Effectively, we got access to all of the private hospital beds in those 18 hospitals, which was approximately 2,300. We never used more than approximately 45% of the capacity. Through that capacity, we got approximately 50,000 procedures done. The context for not using it is that this was an insurance policy and the good news is that we did not have to use it - we did not have to put those beds up to 70% or 80%. Value was achieved by having the safety net, getting 50,000 procedures through it and having access to the beds. The good news story was that we did not actually need them because the overall response of the State meant that we did not end up with the level of overwhelmed public healthcare system we could have ended up with.