Professor Colette Cowan:

I will answer the Deputy's question first before handing over to Professor Lenehan. The Deputy raised this issue previously in a parliamentary question and at another meeting that I did not attend. We were on site in University Hospital Limerick when I first started eight years ago and we were there for four years. We moved out because clinical teams had no space to work out of and we took up an entire floor of an administration block while clinicians and consultants had no space. That is why we made the move.

I remind the Deputy that I am the CEO of the UL Hospitals Group and I run six hospitals, not just University Hospital Limerick. We are on site all of the time. All of my team go up and down to University Hospital Limerick three or four times a day. We hold our meetings there in the boardroom. All of the staff know me personally by name and we walk through the system. With all due respect, it is unfair to compare us with a principal in a school because we are responsible for six hospitals. I am equally required at hospitals in Nenagh and Ennis, the maternity hospital, Croom and St. John's hospitals.

We have operational directorate structures in our UHL site. Management teams at the most senior level run that site. We also have a head of service in there now. HIQA did not say in its report that the CEO and the hospitals group were off site.