Ms Fiona Tierney:

From a good governance perspective, we were very keen to ensure the Minister's vision for a new governance structure of the HSE would be clear to us. We are happy to see that the position of chairperson of the new board of the HSE was to be advertised. If I am correct, we did this almost two weeks ago. It is currently advertised on the website www.stateboards.ieand the closure date is in July. We hope to have quite a wide range and number of applications. We are using our own executive search services to reach out to potential candidates to make them aware of this very important role.

We are, as the Senator knows, currently working with the Department of Health on the development of the job description for the director general of the HSE, which will change, as proposed, and CEO. The Senator asked a specific question with regard to whether the person had to be a clinician. That is not a question I can answer directly for her today. I just do not have sufficient recall of the job description as it is currently-----