Mary Lou McDonald (Dublin Central, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

Curiously enough, they are also people who were never considered for additional payments or top-ups - do not mind the vocabulary - from the clinic. Is that not an interesting thing? I will tell the witnesses why I raise it and why it struck me so forcibly. I read a letter from Mr. Nugent to Mr. Leo Kinsella, regional director of operations, HSE Dublin north east, dated 19 July 2013. Ms Laverne McGuinness, who is with us today, described this particular letter in an e-mail we have - I hope she does not mind me referring to it - as coming short of telling the HSE to get lost, and I do not disagree. The issue I want to focus on here is where Mr. Nugent justifies the appointment of Mr. Conlan in quite trenchant language. I would consider this an aggressive letter if it landed on my desk. Mr. Nugent made the following commentary. "The person who leads an organisation is at the very heart of its performance [fair enough], its ethos and its function." That is stated in this letter. It just occurs to me, and I wonder if it has occurred to the staff of the Central Remedial Clinic, what the pay practices and the decisions which Mr. Martin so robustly defends citing company law represent in terms of the ethos of the clinic not at a local level or at a front-line level, but at the very top end of management. Would Mr. Nugent care to comment on that?