Mr. Stephen Mulvany:

We cannot give absolute guarantees as to what St. John of God's will or will not decide to do. As I said earlier, however, our aim in this is to address the issues in a way that ensures the continuation of those services. We are very much aware that a lot of people depend on, and some have very high regard for, the services they get from St. John of God's, and that there are a lot of staff is St. John of God's who do a very good job.

There are a number of issues and our aim is to address them. There are governance issues within St. John of God's in our view, though they have their own perspective on this. There is the outcome of the internal audit report around public pay policy. St. John of God's also has service issues, difficulties it is addressing with HIQA, the regulator. It has submitted an improvement plan to HIQA and that is being monitored. Furthermore, it has financial issues. Again, we disagree with St. John of God's when it comes to the figure they view as their deficit or under-funding. We are working through a process with them around that and we intend to do some forensic accounting work into this matter. We do not accept the level of deficit or under-funding that they talk about. Our longer-term plan acknowledges the need to invest further in their services, but in the new type of services, the decongregated services that we want, and not just in the current services.