Simon Harris (Wicklow, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

Given that we see so much of each other, it would be nice not to see each other in and around 25 December.

I welcome Mr. O'Brien and his team. Dr. Smith has done an impressive body of work which is very helpful to the committee and taxpayer in trying to ascertain what is going on here. I am encouraged by what Mr. O'Brien has said and his determination to deal with the problem and to clean up what has been a mess for a number of years whereby taxpayers' funds have been going into organisations. Once the cheque leaves the HSE or the Department of Health, to a large degree people have been left to their own devices, or certainly have not been scrutinised as well as they should have been. However, it seems to be a case of "Here we go again." The HSE is in trying to clean up the mess and we are here trying to find out what went on, and nobody is responsible. The boards or the section 38 agencies have made these payments that never should have been made. There were, to use the witness's words, potentially nod-and-wink or verbal agreements with the attitude of: "Your man down the road said I could have the payment." The Department of Public Expenditure and Reform has advised us that there is no paper trail for any of these verbal agreements.

It cannot be a case of the dog eating the homework. It is not acceptable to claim that the system messed up and that it was a systemic problem. Somebody in the HSE, the Department of Health, the Department of Public Expenditure and Reform or its predecessor, or all three, messed up by taking his or her eye off the ball. How did we get to this nod-and-wink culture? Surely somebody in the Department of Public Expenditure and Reform - or the Department of Finance, as it was for a large part of the time - was keeping an eye on the money that was been given to the Department of Health, to the HSE, or to the boards of section 38 agencies. It is not an acceptable answer for very hard-pressed taxpayers, who are preparing to hear details of the HSE's very difficult service plan, to hear that it just happened and it was the culture. It was the culture, but can anybody be held responsible? Who is responsible? I ask Mr. O'Brien to respond first, but I believe the question goes even wider than the HSE.