Ms Emma-Jane Morgan:

The timescale is likely to be the earlier part of 2022. That all depends on getting the slots within the Houses of the Oireachtas and getting the legislation passed.

We have engaged significantly in extensive analysis of the scheme. It involves looking at what works well within the current administrative scheme, previous learnings from the EU cross-border directive and learning from stakeholder feedback through this forum and this committee's recommendations. That is taking a bit of time but it is helping us to understand where we can make potential changes to the scheme and where changes might have an adverse effect on the scheme. It involves the capacity issues referred to by the Senator. We need to make sure we do not make changes to the scheme that would create an issue of capacity and, ultimately, create waiting lists for people to access services in the North. This is something nobody wants. The fact that it is patient-led and patient-driven and access is very timely is a credit to the scheme. We must be very mindful.

Another area we are looking at is the shortfall in payments, which has been raised here previously. We are looking at this to see if we can protect patients in respect of this. Can we make sure they are better informed about the level of reimbursement they would get from the HSE so that when they go to the North, they understand the level of reimbursement they might get and have better information in respect of a choice of provider and what shortfalls might exist? A situation has arisen previously where people have had shocks when shortfalls emerge when they are reimbursed.

Those are the type of areas we are looking at. We are looking to make sure we improve the scheme for the benefit of patients but we do not want to create a scheme that does not work or creates waiting lists. We are conscious of capacity in the North, which has its own waiting list problems. I am sure it is looking to its own private providers to provide services in the same way we do down here so we are conscious of that as well. We are trying to take account of all of that, which is leading to more detailed and thorough analysis before we are in a position to go to the Oireachtas with the statutory legislation on it.