Professor Colette Cowan:

St. John's is a voluntary hospital. The Deputy is quite right that it has a legislative board but it has a service-level agreement with me. I fund it annually with over €24 million. We have a service level agreement whereby there are certain key performance indicators that it has to meet, including in respect of occupancy levels within the hospital system, to assist the group.

The difficulty for St. John's is that it is constrained by its infrastructure. Consequently, it is prone to outbreaks, meaning it has to close wards to keep patients safe. Therefore, occupancy can drop there. That this happens is not the fault of any of the staff; it happens for safety reasons. Those concerned attend a monthly performance meeting on their finances, quality and safety. The meeting is similar to all the other performance meetings we hold under our directorate structure. We work with the CEO of St. John's. I meet the chairman, the bishop, as required. He sends me an invite when he wants me to attend a meeting with the board. I am meeting the board in October. In effect, we have a service level agreement with the hospital.