Simon Harris (Wicklow, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

We all want to arrive at a single-tier health service, and if we were already there we would not all be working so hard to arrive at that point. That is the purpose of the Sláintecare report, which has received broad political consensus. I do not know if the Deputy has walked the corridors of Holles Street hospital lately but I have been there many times. The point I am making, which the Deputy seems to reject, is that at the moment public patients are receiving excellent care from staff in deplorable conditions. Every patient, whether public or private, in this new state-of-the-art national maternity hospital will have the same high quality inpatient room. That is very important and is a significant development.

Yes, there will be rooms for consultants to see outpatients; in fact, there will be 32 consult examination rooms in total. Under the current consultant contract, roughly proportionately, some five of them would be used for private clinics. The point I am making in direct answer to the Deputy's question, which is how it is compatible with the Sláintecare report, is that if policy changes in this area, so too will the allocation of those rooms. I have to comply with the law today in terms of contracts but we are going to deliver the same rooms to the exact same specification as outpatient consult examination rooms and to the exact same specification as inpatient rooms as well. That is very significant progress for women in this country in terms of their own treatment.

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