Oireachtas Joint and Select Committees

Thursday, 3 October 2013

Public Accounts Committee

2011 Annual Report of the Comptroller and Auditor General and Appropriation Accounts
Vote 7 - Superannuation and Retired Allowances
Vote 42 - Office of the Minister for Public Expenditure and Reform
Chapter 6 - Financial Commitments under Public Private Partnerships
Chapter 12 - Vote Accounting
Chapter 13 - Procurement without a Competitive Process

11:30 am

Photo of Simon HarrisSimon Harris (Wicklow, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I thank Mr. Watt and his team for attending and the comprehensive overview he gave of his Department's work. By any fair, objective measure, his Department is doing a good job. We can see in yesterday's Exchequer figures, in the context of the spending profile and the Ombudsman legislation, a solid effort to keep spending under control and reform access to information, which should be acknowledged.

It is a mean feat that the Government and the Department managed to pull off the Haddington Road agreement with the public sector unions. As Mr. Watt said, it is a much more complex agreement than the Croke Park agreement and, for that reason, it addresses many of the criticisms people like me had of the Croke Park agreement. It treated everybody the same, whereas under the Haddington Road agreement, while it is difficult for everyone, the more one earns, the more one contributes. However, I am concerned about the HSE element of the agreement. It was agreed to in July. I read a letter which I am sure everybody has seen from the HSE's chief financial officer to a number of his subordinates in September in which he said they had agreed to €150 million in savings but that they would not achieve that figure and would come in at €104 million. Two or three months after people sat in a room through tortuous negotiations to reach an agreement, the HSE is already stating it signed up to achieve €150 million in savings but that it cannot deliver €50 million of them. How could the chief financial officer have lost the possibility of saving €50 million within two months?

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