Caoimhghín Ó Caoláin (Cavan-Monaghan, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

I welcome the Minister, the Minister of State, the deputy director of the HSE and her colleague. I will refer to specific questions I posed in advance. There are so many issues one would like to raise in the course of the meeting, but it may not be possible to do so.

I will begin with the 24th question concerning the conflict of interest in the appointment of the chairman of the non-executive board of the West and North West Hospitals Group and the appointment of a consultancy firm, in which he was a 50% stakeholder, to carry out a review of maternity services in the Galway and Roscommon Hospitals Group which subsequently included Mayo, Sligo and Letterkenny general hospitals. The reply I have received states the HSE internal audit team was assured by the CEO that he had made the decision to source D & F Health Partnership Limited based on its suitability for the project.

The report that was prepared by the internal audit committee and presented on 21 May 2014 states that the CEO advised audit that in his view D & F Health Partnership Limited had the necessary skills and resources available at the time and of course, internal audit established definitively that no procurement exercise was carried out at the time.

How is it that the CEO of the West-North West Hospitals Group could make such determination in respect of D & F Health Partnership Limited, a company of which the chairman of the board had a 50% stake, when there had been no previous engagement with that company and no other contracts had been entered into with it, and as the internal audit report states there are no firm plans to engage D & F Health Partnership Limited on any future consultancy projects? On what was the CEO basing his assessment of D & F Health Partnership Limited having the necessary skills and resources available at the time when the level of expenditure concerned required that three tenders be secured before a final determination be made as to who should be appointed to carry out the review and report on maternity services in the said hospitals? We must remember that the national financial regulations state very clearly that all purchases between €5,000 and €25,000 excluding VAT require a minimum of three written quotations. Why would the CEO have acted as he did, and on what basis was his assessment of D & F Health Partnership Limited undertaken? We require an answer that will give us clarity on the process.

I note also that in the reply I have received it states that the investigation found that while Mr. Daly had disclosed to the board that he was a former employee and former director of D & F Health Partnership Limited, he failed to disclose that he continued to hold a 50% shareholding in the company. However in the internal audit report presented on 21 May 2014 by Mr. Paul Hannon, it actually states that audit was advised that on the day prior to the board meeting - not on the day of the board meeting as the reply that I have received states - a pre-meeting was held with some members. Is that normal practice? Who would be included in such a pre-meeting and who was not included at this pre-meeting at which the Chairman offered to absent himself from the chair for the board meeting on the following day? This offer was declined because it was felt there was no conflict of interest. It is a fairly serious matter that those present did not realise there most certainly was a conflict of interest.

It states in the recommendations in the internal audit report that a register of members' interests should be established at the hospital group and should be reviewed when sourcing potential suppliers for the group, and that the register should be comprehensive and subject to review and updated on a regular basis as this will help to avoid situations in which a potential conflict of interest may arise with a supplier to the group. That recommendation is particular to the West-North West Hospitals Group. I would like to know if that recommendation has now been applied across all hospital groups so that the situation that arose in the West-North West Hospitals Group cannot and must not arise in any other situation where a potential, and I emphasise potential, conflict of interest may arise in the expenditure of public moneys on specific contracts for performance. In this instance I would like to know if that particular recommendation has now become a directive across the HSE. On what date was the final report of D & F Health Partnership Limited actually produced? I understand a draft report was in situ at the time of the carrying out of the internal audit. At what time was a final report from D & F Health Partnership Limited presented on maternity services across the five hospitals concerned? If time has not run out-----