Dr. Colin Doherty:

To the best of my knowledge the issue revolves around the recruitment ban locally. We were given a budget in the service plan from January 2010 for the nurses to be appointed. We oversaw the appointment process and the requirement for training for these nurses to be approved. We provided the equipment and identified the space in Cork University Hospital for the epilepsy unit.

We put in the €500,000 worth of equipment, but one crucial piece was missing - the local hospital did not have the capacity to burst through its employment ceiling to hire the people, despite the fact that the money was there. The money, equipment and space are available, everybody is aligned and everybody knows it is needed but, unfortunately, there was a critical problem with the employment ceiling locally.