Brendan Smith (Cavan-Monaghan, Fianna Fail)

Senator Fitzgerald made the point for me in the sense that she agrees we need extra beds for public patients. This initiative is designed to make 1,000 extra beds available for public patients. Under the programme for Government we are committed to providing an additional 1,500 public acute hospital beds. The co-location initiative aims to deliver 1,000 of these beds for public patients through the development of private hospitals on public sites. The intention is to transfer private activity to those hospitals, thereby freeing up capacity for public patients. The balance of approximately 500 public acute hospital beds are at various stages of planning under the Health Service Executive's capital plan.

I am pleased Senator Fitzgerald referred to the National Treatment Purchase Fund. I met a gentleman last Saturday evening coming out of the chapel from mass who through ill health has had to derive his total income for many years from an invalidity pension. That man needed a hip or knee replacement operation and under the National Treatment Purchase Fund he was admitted to a private hospital facility in Galway. He told me that he was treated like the President in hospital. I replied to my good friend, Padraig, that it is the way he deserved to be treated and that is what we want to see in our hospital system, namely, everybody getting the best possible treatment when they need it with ease of access, not depending on their ability to pay private health insurance.