Professor Colette Cowan:

Representatives from UPMC have visited to the mid-west region. They have engaged with us on health data as to whether they should build it. They are working, in the main, with Limerick City and County Council because it is a regeneration programme and a development of housing, as well as a hospital system. They have also engaged with the board of St. John's Hospital on how that would work. St. John's is also a very important hospital in our region. We, as a team in the public sector, are interested in an elective hospital. We are not interested in who builds it or where it is. Equally, an elective hospital could be put at St. John's. We are interested in patients getting access to care and that the model would be developed in the region. UPMC has its own business. We are not involved in that.