Professor Steve Thomas:

One of the things I found interesting in the first two or three years of Sláintecare was that I was expecting a knock on the door and was waiting for the phone to ring. I was going to respond that I would give it my best shot but that knock or call never came. I was incredibly surprised by that. I was surprised that the Department did not want to get inside my head and find out what we were discussing, thinking about and deciding. There were many things we could have debated. It was strange that the interaction never came. I must say that Dr. Burke and I now have large research programmes about which we link in with the Department and the HSE. We are having some of those discussions now. However, at the start, there was very little contact. It was almost like there was radio silence.