Seán Fleming (Laois-Offaly, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

Almost 12 months have passed since the compilation of the internal audit report on the section 38 organisations. All the HSE can confirm is that just ten of the approximately 40 organisations or agencies are fully compliant. Most of them have made a business case at this stage, but just ten of them have been accepted by the HSE as being fully compliant. That happened after confirmation was received on foot of an internal audit report. How can we be confident that the HSE will have confidence in the information it gets back from all the bodies when the validating exercise is completed between now and the end of March? How will the HSE be able to come to an understanding that what it is told is the case? That was not the experience in the case of the section 38 organisations. A year on, we are a long way from concluding the process. What does Mr. O'Brien see as the position regarding the section 39 organisations? Will the HSE do a sample test? I understand that it does not intend to check them. Given that there are so many section 39 organisations, I suggest that the HSE internal audit committee should do some sample audits of some of the section 39 returns. As we have heard, some of them are 98% funded by the State.