Madam, - I would like to challenge Patrick J O'Brien's unfair characterisation of "the sinister introduction of co-location of private hospitals, for profit" (Letters, June 2nd).
The only people to profit from this policy are Irish citizens: co-location increases the overall capacity of the health system (both public and as a whole), by freeing up private beds in public hospitals, and ensuring that public beds have public patients in them.
It is the quickest means for 1,000 new beds to be freed up for the public system, and at a projected cost to the taxpayer which is lower than any comparable alternative.
It allows for public patients to benefit from investment in expensive technologies, a more effective National Treatment Purchase Fund and a solution for doctors operating both publicly and privately.
To use buzz-words like "profit" is unfair, and there's probably enough of that in Irish politics anyway. - Yours, etc,
JONATHAN WYSE, Kilteragh Road, Foxrock, Dublin 18.