Ms Eilísh Hardiman:

I thank the Chairman. I would like to add to some of the responses to questions. The plan for pensions is that staff are transferring so pension rights are protected. I can give that assurance. From an employment perspective, we see the vast majority of staff still working in their existing locations until we do the reconfiguration. That will be planned with staff.

Staff engagement is very important and we have two approaches to that. We totally recognise the well-established mechanisms that are in place for major change management and the importance of engagement and involvement of staff in shaping where they are going to be. We have set up a formal engagement framework process with all the official trade unions that have negotiating rights. We have brought it through the national structures. We have had very good engagements from all the representative bodies where we have agreed the steering group terms of reference and the structure of how we are going to proceed. We have had our first meeting and a second meeting is happening before the end of the year. There is a requirement for specific work groups that relate to specific issues to specific members of staff and that is what is envisaged in terms of how we will work. Our employee relations lead is starting to acknowledge the work that needs to undertaken on this. That is the formal side and we recognise that getting that started early is very important for the next four to five years ahead.

On the other side, and in regard to the Bill we are talking about today, the vast majority of staff will not feel any different in their daily operational work of looking after children and their families in their hospitals. It is very important that staff feel they have a way of inputting in terms of shaping the future of this service. A programme kicked off whereby staff members are engaging in the programme called On the Move Together. Staff can get their voices heard about shaping how it is we are going to shape the service into the future. We have had roadshows in the three children's hospitals and 700 staff turned up to those roadshows. Many of the staff have put their names forward to be part of this programme. The children's hospitals staff are very committed to the delivery of services for children's health, so I am not surprised that many want to be part of shaping our future together.

In regard to the name, we had an extensive process that took about nine months. We did some research into this. In my previous role of CEO of Tallaght Hospital, I changed the name there. I certainly did not want Our Lady's Children's Hospital, Crumlin, Temple Street University Children's Hospital and the National Children's Hospital at Rialto. The primary concern of members of the public is that they get the care and the treatment wherever they go. Everybody understands that.

The name of the organisation is really important to staff. We undertook roadshows around the three children's hospitals and we invited staff to put forward suggestions for a name. We also went to the regional units because they are part of a network. It is not just a hospital that we are naming. We had about 1,000 submissions and 300 names came out of that process. We set up a steering group that was representative of the staff and parents, which was very important. We went through a process of focus groups that involved more members of staff and more parents. We did market research with the public and, most importantly, the Youth Advisory Council, which the committee has heard me talk about before, and which has an extensive history of using our services. They helped us to come up with a name which really was to work on several levels. It is not just a building. People see that services are not about buildings anymore. Services are about a network that is broader and can reach even into the home. It needed to work at its location in Rialto. If we followed the example of Beaumont, for instance, we would have called the hospital Rialto. That would not work, however, with Rialto at Connolly and Rialto at Tallaght. It needed to work in multiple locations.

We tried to reflect its mythical character. Phoenix stands for inspiration, hope, transformation, growth and this constant sense of renewal that we think really reflects the aspiration of our staff in what they try to do everyday with the children and the families we serve. Another element of it was that it was easy to pronounce. We had a speech and language therapist on our selection committee and she was very clear that some names are difficult for small children to pronounce. It had to go through that linguistics test. It is also easy to translate into Irish. It is féinics and it is pronounced the same way linguistically. As our vision for the service is an all-island network, it needed to work for all our colleagues on the whole of the island, including our colleagues in Northern Ireland. It had many tests and it was robustly challenged.

Hence, we see the name very much as a unifying name. Phoenix Children's Health is the name of the network. Phoenix Children's at Tallaght is the outpatient and urgent care centre, Phoenix Children's at Connolly is the one at Connolly and Phoenix Children's Hospital Ireland is the hospital as part of that network. That was the process behind it. I hope that helps the committee understand it. I know submissions were made and those names were considered as part of this process. However, for all the reasons I have outlined, some of the names put forward were ruled out, including the names Deputy Ó Snodaigh put forward.

On the terms and conditions, the majority of staff are going to continue to work where they are at the moment. We are assuring staff they will have no less favourable pay and conditions. We are conscious that we have to go through a process over the next four years to get to a single hospital. There differences in staff salary scales; we understand that. It is a process of going through that over the next four years.

On the mixture of privatised and public staff, as part of the due diligence on what we call the pre-commencement analysis and review, we have taken cognisance of all those contractual arrangements. The vast majority of them are similar across the hospitals and we do not see it as an issue. However, we need to look at contemporary ways of working into the future. As always, we will comply with the guidance around employment negotiations and other agreements that have been put in place. We are more similar at the moment than we are dissimilar on getting to the new hospital.