Ms Laverne McGuinness:

That has been done. That is what I was trying to outline a while ago.

Each of those individual agencies has been met and it is not just a case of form filling or being sent out forms. Each of the agencies has an individual relationship with an area manager. What we are saying, however, is that it should be one area manager responsible for the totality of a particular organisation, and if an organisation has three or four branches, there should be just one manager who can take the totality of it.

We are working with the agencies to see how can they reach compliance, and that is where they have sent in some of those business cases that I outlined. There are 60 business cases, setting out that there are legal contractual obligations and seeking red circling. We are going to work through with the agencies, and, indeed, discuss with our Department of Health and the Department of Public Expenditure and Reform colleagues, after we filter through them again, what the solution is in that regard. Also, it is very difficult to get compliance overnight, as the committee will be aware. That is what the Deputy is saying - we must work through them.

As well as the normal interaction that we would have with the area manager through the service level arrangement, we also have put additional governance arrangements in place with the boards, because it was primarily between the executives before. We meet the chairs of the boards themselves twice a year now in the disability sector. One of those meetings is attended by the director of social care.

As well as trying to develop a relationship, we are also trying to provide knowledge as to the latest best practice in relation to governance. We last met on 20 June. We had a specialist in the field to talk about the experiences, and there was a question and answer session in order to help them. We have also asked that an audit be done on their compliance to assist them with the process. We are there to help them in order to commit to compliance, so it is not as contentious a relationship as it might seem through correspondence. The correspondence then relates to when we are not getting the information or not getting the required level of documentation that we need in order to assure ourselves that what should be being paid is being paid.