Louise O'Reilly (Dublin Fingal, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

The Minister is aware of my view on this matter but I will repeat it. We will never improve the public health service by investing in the private sector, regardless of how many times we do it. The Minister can cross his fingers and wish really hard but it is not going to happen. We will agree to disagree on that point.

The Minister referenced a monitoring framework. Who will monitor this initiative? As I said earlier, the Committee on the Future of Healthcare has had discussions with the ESRI and other agencies on this issue, all of which said that it is difficult to extract information from the private sector for reasons of, as they put it, "commercial sensitivity", for which I have another term, although I do not propose to repeat here. Perhaps the Minister will outline who will be involved in the monitoring framework and if it will be required to achieve targets on behalf of the public purse. Again, I do not believe this initiative is good value for money. However, we will agree to disagree in that regard also.

See this speech in context