Paul Murphy (Dublin South West, RISE) | Oireachtas source

Last week I asked the Minister about various aspects of the costs we are paying to lease the private hospitals. I asked whether we are paying the directors' pay, the CEO pay, rent or interest for the private hospitals. The Minister said I would get a response in writing from the HSE or the Department within days but I have not received one yet. Fundamentally, I am trying to get to the bottom of why the HSE is being charged €44,000 per bed when the NHS is paying about €10,000 per bed. I will pose those questions again to the Minister. I will add that, according to the HSE agreement with the private hospitals, each of the private hospital groups was due to produce its cost statement by today detailing its full costs for April. Have those statements been provided? What is contained within them? Will they be provided to Deputies or will they be published? Last week the Minister said these are all on an open-cost, open-book basis, so can people please see these costs? Also, does the HSE contract or does the final agreements mean the public is paying rent or interest on a debt to Denis O'Brien's Ragazza special purpose vehicle, SPV, which finances the Beacon and is registered in Luxembourg so it does not pay tax on profits? Similarly, are we paying either rent or any interest on a debt to the Goodman Group, another group of companies based in Luxembourg-----

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