Mr. Tony O'Brien:

Obviously I must balance all these things. It is my obligation in terms of the totality of my responsibilities as director general. One of the things we have decided this week is mentioned in the statement of internal financial control. It is an external review by an external firm of compliance within the section 38 bodies over a three-year programme. As a result of the St. John of God issue, I have directed that the programme be accelerated and be completed within 18 months and not three years. I am able to supplement resources in some ways.

We also have a number of internal audit exercises, some of which are well known. I will not mention them here but they relate to organisations well known and discussed here before. They are being pursued via external counting firms or auditors. Many of the issues we are currently discussing arose in a period when the internal audit function was particularly light on resources, and that is why I have added to that resource. In addition, many of the area operations responsible for monitoring the arrangements they have with particular local providers suffered a significant exodus of management and administration grades during that period. Consequently, much knowledge was lost.