Leo Varadkar (Dublin West, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I am happy to be corrected if I am incorrect but I am informed they were put back onto the point in the public waiting list they would have been on anyway, so in that sense they have not been disadvantaged. That is not to say they have been well treated, which is a different matter entirely.

If I were to provide the funding it would have to come from somewhere else, and that would mean people who are already waiting longer than these patients waiting even longer again, and that would not be fair. Funding is limited and when funding is limited, urgent cases must be treated first and then everyone else in chronological order.

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