Professor Noel Whelan:

The group was established, as the Deputy heard, in 2003. The key initial task was to consolidate that group. Our shareholders wanted us to do that. They wanted us to ensure the private hospital emerging and the public hospitals were unified interactively so that the public hospitals could benefit from the private hospital to share beds more for the public sector. The key task was to consolidate the group. We immediately asked how would we do this. We could have recruited another person separately but we said let the one individual do the two jobs fully and actively because they are intertwined. Then the new hospital came on stream. We had to have that designed, built and developed and had to get it up and trading and so on.