Mr. Tony O'Brien:

Yes. Assistant chief executive officer, chief operating officer. The post was advertised twice through public open competition and we were not able to fill it. As identified in the report of HIQA, the group is an important group at a critical stage of its development and has a number of challenges to overcome. One reason it was a forerunner in the group structure, one of the first two, was because of the enormity of the challenges it needed to overcome. The group chief executive officer, the interim board and I identified the necessity to strengthen the management team there. We have, for example, by open competition put in a financial officer there that it did not have before, as well as other posts. This particular post simply proved impossible to fill for a variety of reasons, as sometimes occurs. Consequently, on an interim basis, pending the rerunning of the competition, we used an agency-based approach. In other words, we brought in someone from an agency to fill the role. It is not by any means the most desirable way but the options available were to leave vacant a critical post in a highly challenged group of hospitals at a time of enormous improvements needing to be made. In consequence, it was agreed to fill the post on that basis, and so it is not an employee, it is a contractor.