Mr. Tony O'Brien:

The HSE appointed the boards but was asked not to appoint the remaining boards so that Government could do so. The exception is the Children's Hospital Group, which has a ministerial appointed board. The Children's Hospital Group is in a slightly different position for a variety of reasons. In terms of the six acute hospital groups, two had boards and four did not.

In addition, the process of appointing chief executives for those hospital groups is difficult. The level of interest in those roles was small and the potential to recruit outside of our system or to attract any international interest was adversely affected by the level of remuneration, which was not competitive in terms of those fulfilling similar roles in other jurisdictions. Ultimately, at my request and that of Mr. Woods and his predecessor, the brightest of our own staff were prepared to stand forward and take up those roles. The chief executives we currently have in place were appointed on an interim basis outside of the recruitment process simply because those recruitment processes carried out by the Public Appointments Services had not been successful. That having been said, and the committee having met them all, they are all doing pretty good jobs and making a good contribution.

On the two posts the Deputy asked me about, I used the term as soon as practicable because, contrary to what one might expect, I have very little control over those processes. When the post of deputy director general fell vacant this time last year I commenced a process of seeking the necessary approvals to refill that post and to create the additional post. That led to provisional approval in August which enabled me to engage in the dialogue I needed to engage in with the others who were affected, which included the issue of the communication the Deputy has there. We then had to get into a further process which required the individual job specifications to be signed off, not only by myself and the Department of Health but also by the Department of Public Expenditure and Reform, before we could invite the Public Appointments Service to proceed with the recruitment process. That is why I was ambiguous about the deadline. I can tell the Deputy, however, that the Public Appointments Service has kicked off that process and we expect to have the individuals in post in the first quarter of 2017. I do not have the level of control over timetabling that one might imagine.