Mr. Barry McBrien:

I am not saying it would happen all the time but if I am in a context where I am looking after someone who requires methadone and I need his or her episode of care to be completed, I have to go and ask a senior doctor to come away from what he or she is doing. Such doctors might be looking after someone who is having a heart attack or someone who is having breathing problems, etc. They would have to come away from that to go to another area of the department to duplicate or replicate the work I have just done in order to prescribe the methadone for that patient. It is complete replication and duplication of work and as I said, it is also re-stigmatises the patient.