Joan Burton (Dublin West, Labour)
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Question 129: To ask the Minister for Health and Children if her attention has been drawn to the difficulties in respect of funding by current or proposed private hospitals; if she has given such hospitals, their management or investors letters of comfort or other form of assurance regarding State support, funding through the National Treatment Purchase Fund, confirmation of business through the National Treatment Purchase Fund or purchase of services by the Health Service Executive from such hospitals; the details of these discussions, agreements or support indications; the financial commitments and the hospitals to which they were made; and if she will make a statement on the matter. [4160/09]

Mary Harney (Dublin Mid West, Progressive Democrats)
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Both the National Treatment Purchase Fund (NTPF) and the Health Service Executive (HSE), as appropriate, contract with private hospitals for the provision of acute hospital services for public patients. The HSE has made arrangements with private hospitals for the provision of, for example, radiotherapy services.

The NTPF is funded from the Vote for my Department. The Fund receives an annual allocation from which it arranges a quantum of in-patient treatments and out-patient appointments for the year, in line with an agreed service plan. The Fund is obliged to adhere to a direction to source at least 90% of the treatments it arranges from the private hospital system. The NTPF may purchase a maximum of 10% of its overall capacity from the public hospital system where this does not adversely affect core services. The purchasing of such capacity is necessary in order not to exclude patients whose surgical needs are best met within the public hospital system.

The NTPF negotiates overall prices for procedures with individual private hospitals which includes pre and post operative consultations, consultant fees and hospital costs, etc. The fund is continuing in 2009 to deal with private hospitals on the same basis as in previous years.

The HSE and the NTPF have confirmed to me that no letters of comfort or analogous commitments have been issued by them to private hospital providers.