Mr. Bernard Gloster:

I am certainly proposing and hoping that they be in place for the start of 2024. However, there are factors outside my control. I do not have the final say in the approval of those posts. When the request is made to the Department of Public Expenditure, National Development Plan Delivery and Reform, there are approvals to be gone through because these are senior public sector roles. I certainly hope to have my part of the implementation plan finalised and agreed with the Secretary General by next week. I have already had really good discussions with him about that. Obviously, the Minister will have a view on the totality of the implementation plan and whether it is consistent with his priorities and objectives.

The third point relates to why I do not want to lose the value of the reference to Waterford. I appreciate that the Deputy's time is limited. I have heard lots about Waterford and I visited it last week, walked the hospital and met the members of the management team. Apart from the enormous good work they do there, they are currently providing the additional response to the people of Wexford following the horrendous fire at the hospital there. Ahead of the implementation of the RHAs, the most important people in the delivery and running of services today, who can alleviate a little more pressure on hospital emergency departments and waiting lists, are the hospital chief executives and the chief officers in the community. From 4 April, albeit in very big size and structure, I am bringing those 15 people together with the centre of the HSE in a management process chaired by me. The principal objective of that is to take the exemplars of good process and good, solid management and hold them up for everybody else. It is not just about holding them up for everybody else to say they might think about using them; it is about me as CEO mandating that and then inquiring, if it is not happening, why it is not happening. That is how we can at least start to get some consistency of approach across the country and take the benefit of the best of what different parts of the service have to offer.