Simon Harris (Wicklow, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I suppose the short answer is that I do not agree but I appreciate the sentiment expressed by the Deputy in terms of wanting to make sure we treat as many public patients as possible in private hospitals. We, the taxpayers, effectively own or at least own the use of all the private hospitals in the country until the end of June. Under that agreement, we have the option of extending that agreement for at least a month and an option after that for extending for a further month based on a mutual agreement. As more than 300 private doctors have signed up, it is a minority of consultants who have not taken up our offer, which is a pro ratasalary starting at €141,000 per year and going to in excess of €170,000, so we are offering to pay people to work in these hospitals.

The Deputy is right. Thankfully, we have not seen the surge we feared. That is a fair point but as the Deputy rightly says, we may yet see a surge so we believe we still need that capacity. We are beginning to see a very significant number of people being treated in the private hospitals. There is a bit of a myth, which has not been put forward by the Deputy, that these hospitals are empty. For example, in April 2020, the Bon Secours Hospital in Cork had 82% inpatient occupancy and now it may even be greater. UPMC Whitfield in Waterford has 55% occupancy, the Mater Private Hospital Cork has 57% occupancy and the Mater Private Hospital in Dublin has 60% occupancy. I can circulate this list to the Deputy rather than taking up all of the time. It has been a strategy of the health service to keep vacant beds for the reasons outlined by the Deputy. We are now looking across the public and private hospitals as to how we can bring back non-Covid care. We will be using some of this capacity, including for some of the things we spoke about last week in terms of cancer care. I had a very long meeting with the Irish Hospital Consultants Association, IHCA, last Friday evening where I made it clear to it that the type A contract is the only contract on offer but I did provide clarification regarding continuity of care. We have also given the HSE flexibility where there are some private rooms to which a consultant may wish to have access to continue to use to treat his or her patients and we could meet some of those costs but consultants cannot get a fee if they are treating patients. We cannot pay twice. We have all this extra capacity. It has to be used. There must be equity of access. We cannot effectively own private hospitals and allow a difference in care between private and public. I take the point that there were issues that needed to be teased and ironed out regarding continuity of care and I have written back today to the IHCA regarding that.

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