Mr. Stephen Mulvany:

Obviously, the voluntary hospitals and the community organisations, particularly in disability and other care groups, are key partners for the overall health and social care system. Some of their representatives attended the six regional engagements we had around the country along with some GP colleagues as well. There was a discussion recently at the voluntary dialogue forum which was relevant to the RHAs. That is not enough engagement but certainly we will be increasing the level of engagement with those. Their legal entity status is not what is changing. Who holds the contract with them is likely to move from hospital groups or CHOs to the RHA because we do not intend to put the RHAs in as another layer on top of community healthcare organisations and hospital groups which are HSE constructs. We intend to replace those with the RHAs and whatever substructure goes below that. It is the relationship management that will change. How better to ingrain what is generally a good relationship with the voluntary sector into the management of the regional system and also give it greater appropriate influence nationally is currently being worked through.