Simon Harris (Wicklow, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I thank Deputy Chambers. I revert back to my original point, which is this first became a public policy issue in an effort by the Oireachtas to respond to the Comptroller and Auditor General highlighting an important issue. The question for the Oireachtas, and I hope the analysis I will provide to it shortly on the impact this has had on the private-public mix in public hospitals can enable us to arrive at a point where we must decide if we need to review the policy. I have already said I intend, on foot of receiving this analysis, to review the policy to check whether it is having any unintended consequence. This is the prudent and appropriate thing to do.

When Deputy Chambers says our public hospitals should be purely for public patients, and I mean this respectfully, it is quite a profound statement because while it is likely to be the direction of travel the Oireachtas Committee on the Future of Healthcare goes and it is likely to be the direction of travel I and the Government would favour, we do need to be cognisant of the fact the provisional figure in terms of private patient income in 2016 to our public hospitals was €626 million. This is a big hole that I or any Minister would have to fill. It is a lot of money to take out of the public hospital system and take out of our public health service. How we deal with this is something that needs to be dealt with on a multiannual basis.

See this speech in context