Professor Colette Cowan:

I will again answer back to front and start with my engagement with the Minister. He engages with the acute hospital system nationally. Staff get multiple phone calls and they then contact me. We operate in a hierarchical system. We go through the line so if there is query regarding UL Hospitals Group, the national acute director will contact me and I will do up briefing notes. We are in touch with the Department every two weeks in drawing up briefing notes for the Minister on what is happening. He has visited the hospital, and as I said earlier, he met us. He also visited the Covid vaccination centres. I understand he will visit again shortly to launch the winter plan. That is how the engagement works for us.

I have no issue with the INMO. I am a nurse myself. I have worked with the area lead, Ms Mary Fogarty, for years and years. We always had a very good working relationship. We have a joint union-management forum that meets every month; the directors of nursing meet with it every month.

The representatives are very good. They bring ideas to the table, but sometimes we cannot deliver everything they want.

Just to clarify, regarding the trolley numbers, we are not in dispute with the INMO on its trolley numbers. One of its representatives rings us every morning and we give them the numbers.