Mr. Robert Watt:

I understand they have changed their approach to procurement. They are engaging more in the aggregation of contracts. They are consolidating across the HSE estate. Mr. Quinn's team is working with HSE officials on how they procure and where we can make savings. Management in the HSE believes there are opportunities for savings in a number of areas. We spoke about the drugs issue which is clear, but there are opportunities in other areas on which we are working with them. It is a technical and management challenge for them. They are dealing with a large number of providers and units within the system and co-ordinating and consolidating all of them is a big challenge to get value for money and the best deal for the taxpayer. I would not underestimate the scale of the challenge in this or other areas of procurement about which we spoke in terms of the figure of €500 million we have set out. An enormous amount of work needs to be done. We need to look at the specifications, reduce demand, use analytics to identify where the spend is and aggregate contracts. We are implementing a variety of measures to try to improve how we procure. This is a big undertaking; it is one of the largest change programmes we have ever undertaken and Mr. Quinn is leading it. The reason we are undertaking it is we discovered that right across the system we had too many buyers buying the same goods and services from the same suppliers at different prices and conditions. It was an inefficient system and an inefficient way of doing it. Our goal is to eliminate these practices and do it in a way which will save us money, while, at the same time, minimising the impact on jobs provided by local suppliers.