Under the previous Minister for Health, third-party insourcing was introduced and used by the HSE to reduce waiting lists and carry out additional procedures in public hospitals outside normal hours. Now, providers are being told the system will come to an end in June, despite no alternative plans being published. At the same time, the numbers on waiting lists have surged to 155,000 since December 2024. More than 126,000 people are now waiting for treatments and diagnosis. What is difficult for patients in my constituency to understand is that over the past 27 months, insourcing delivered more than 500,000 episodes of care for around €90 million while outsourcing has cost €500 million for 157,000 episodes of care. As a former Minister of Health, does the Taoiseach accept that the Government is moving away from the more cost-effective tools available to it in the context of reducing waiting lists? Will he intervene with the Minister?

There are fundamental issues with the insourcing model as it evolved. We are talking about people working in tertiary public hospitals who are being paid already. There are issues of which we have to be very conscious in terms of making sure that we are not paying twice for the same procedures or services. There have to be clear lines of demarcation. We are always open to engaging with perspectives people may have on this, but certainly there was a significant hue and cry about this when the scale of it was revealed. It has caused concerns. Then the HSE investigated some aspects of it and some of what it came up with was not ideal at all or optimal in terms of how we should deploy public resources.