Mr. Stephen Mulvany:

To seek to address this, if one visits Tallaght Hospital, which I have and which performs well as the Comptroller and Auditor General said, consultants there sign off in under 30 days. That is a reasonably good performance overall. However, at Connolly and Mullingar, the main difference one sees is not around the administrative process, albeit there is some, but around the level of focus it gets. In Tallaght, it is at every level of the organisation. The medical board is met, the senior executive team shares detail by consultant as to which consultants are and are not signing and the individual business directorates follow it up. At a number of levels, including the board, this issue gets significant additional focus at Tallaght Hospital. There is no two ways around the fact that this is not the case as much in Connolly and Mullingar but it needs to become the case.