Ms Rosarii Mannion:

Yes. That is perfect. I will try to address the points in the order in which the Deputy raised them. He should feel free to interrupt me.

I apologise for the timelines surrounding the documentation. It is not the first time we have heard such criticism. We will bring it back and ensure it is not repeated in future.

It is not the first time I have heard these criticisms about recruitment. I am not here to defend what is indefensible. That would not be constructive. I have been in post since September 2015. On coming into post, I was acutely aware of the recruitment issues in respect of clinicians and nursing. This is why we commissioned Professor Frank Keane to examine the consultant recruitment issues. Clearly, many of these issues are complex, and there is no single thing we can do to address them, but the 38 recommendations we are implementing are improving things. It might not look that way, but they certainly are, and we are making progress on each of them. This is the first step.

Overall, regarding the general recruitment issues, I brought a detailed paper to the leadership team last November. As HR director, I am picking up on these issues across the system. Arising from that paper, I was asked to chair a group which would look at improvements to the way in which we do recruitment across the system. Our recruitment is through a shared service, that is, one national centre for recruitment. There are different views on how we can better do recruitment: whether it can be devolved locally, the fact that large-volume competitions can be done centrally, etc. Committee members are welcome to come and sit in on this process.