Ms Laverne McGuinness:

What I was speaking about was the actual service level arrangement which is the Government's document between the HSE and the agencies. In 2009, the then Secretary General of the Department of Health and Children asked that we would write to each of the agencies and ask what salary scales the senior management was on. We commenced that exercise in 2009, which is when the CRC salary scale issue came to light. We then carried out an internal audit and that process has been ongoing in terms of gathering that information. The public pay policy as it currently stands has been recently concluded after a two year process. It is not that we had a comprehensive public pay policy by which to set a bar. We did set down that the agencies needed to comply with the consolidated pay scales in the service level arrangement in 2010. We have been gathering information since 2009. We have put in an internal audit and the internal audit carried out a review and report, which is available. Some 47 of the arrangements have ceased and the important point is that there is no new arrangements being put in place to pay people more than they should be paid under the consolidated pay scales. That is a very important point.

A further enhancement of the governance process is that the boards are the ultimate governors of these organisations in the disability sector or in the hospitals. We now have an arrangement in place with the boards and with the chairs of the boards, whereby they have to sign off on a compliance statement saying that they are in compliance with regard to the eight key areas, one of them being public pay policy, government pay policy and the consolidated pay scales. Other key areas, that members may be interested in, is the whole area of governance, procurement and taxation. We have set them out. It is a continuous process and that is the reality with regard to governance. Governance is on a continuous improvement trajectory right throughout the country.

There was a question on whether we had considered consolidating some of these agencies. As the Chairman rightly states, some of these agencies are very small and we have conducted a value-for-money review of the disability sector. We have that report and year-on-year we target a level of savings to be provided under value for money but with no reduction of services. It is to do with the concentration of back office functions, such as HR, payroll processing, finance and so on.

The Chairman asked whether we would provide the services ourselves. As members may be aware, these agencies have been there for a long time and they provide a very valuable service to a high quality. We interact with them to provide the service on our behalf. We certainly do not consider it to be a charity because they are getting a very significant amount of public funds, which is the reason for the service level arrangements regarding accountability. Let me take the example of the disability sector. Every year about this time children come out of services looking for day placements and we interact with the voluntary sector to provide those placements for them, so certainly in the mind of the HSE and those who receive the provision understand it is publicly funded, although it might be branded under the Brothers of Charity or the John of Gods.

In response to the question as to whether those services go out to tender, the services exist at present and there is no tendering arrangement for them.

Two questions were raised regarding the administration of the overall funding and the service level arrangement. The funding is paid weekly or monthly. This is administered by the business unit and I will ask Patricia McCormack to speak on that. This is a small unit, but we monitor and know exactly what is being paid out and publish a report on the amounts paid to each of the service level providers. Perhaps Ms McCormack will speak on that now.