Mr. Gerry O'Dwyer:

I apologise to Deputy Burke and I will follow that up directly. Normally, as identified by Ms Crehan-Roche, we have a very close relationship between the community and the hospital, we work very closely, and we have a series of meetings every week, as Ms Crehan-Roche has clearly identified, so I am surprised at what the Deputy outlined. I will follow up with him directly afterwards, because I need to apologise to that man on behalf of the health service and we need to ensure that what happened does not occur anywhere else. It is quite unusual, and based on the clinical background Deputy Burke has given us, I am very concerned about it, so I will follow it up directly afterwards.

As regards exit interviews, which Deputy Burke also raised, we have a series of exit interviews and frequent meetings with the staff associations to try to ensure that, if there are any issues that are not resolved or if there is a particular trend in any location where the staff are leaving for any particular reason, those issues are followed up because we are very concerned we maintain and retain our staff at all costs. We have a regular update by the HR director on people who transfer or leave for other locations. I am quite satisfied that, where issues have been raised, they have been dealt with. If there are any other issues, Deputy Burke should not hesitate to give me a call because I will follow them up urgently. As was said by the CEO and the Secretary General earlier, we are also doing our utmost to recruit internationally to fill all possible vacancies and to ensure we have a seamless healthcare service moving forward following the whole model of Sláintecare. That is very important to us all at this stage.