Dr. Don Thornhill:

That is our plan. To be fair to the Department and the Minister, in that particular instance, there was anxiety to get legal partnerships - and, following those, limited legal partnerships - up and running. The unanimous view of the regulatory authority at that time - myself, the professional and lay members all agreed on this point - was that the Department's intervention was inappropriate. That was conveyed to the Minister in strong terms in the minutes that Deputy Clare Daly would have read. Since then - and Dr. Doherty can go into this in more detail - we have had very satisfactory co-operation with the Department. I put that down to perhaps an excess of anxiety and zeal on the part of the Department to get things moving without a sufficient appreciation of the practical issues we had to contend with.