Mary Mitchell O'Connor (Dún Laoghaire, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I thank the witnesses. I, too, wish to pay tribute to the work done by the people on the ground in the section 38 and section 39 organisations. I have a number of questions. The Secretary General of the Department of Public Expenditure and Reform told the Committee of Public Accounts on 3 April 2014 that the HSE had 11 financial management systems. In my view, this is an extraordinary number. Is the HSE confident that it has proper financial management systems? The HSE has been established for ten years.

I note that the HSE has carried out internal audits. How many qualified accountants and auditors are employed in the HSE to audit and check the HSE accounts? I am not referring to account managers - I mean qualified accountants and qualified auditors.

Mr. O'Brien referred to an internal audit report. Who carried out that internal audit report and what was his her or qualification for carrying out a report? Did the HSE consider using external auditors to examine how €3.1 billion is spent? It is not just the period of time since this Government came into power but rather it spans the past ten years. The budget was €16 billion and it has been reduced to €13 billion. Is the HSE confident that the taxpayers are getting value for money and that qualified people have put systems in place?

It seems that the Department of Health is so enmeshed in those organisations, either by accident or by design, that it has run rings around the HSE. Is it now desirable that the Department of Expenditure and Public Reform should provide a fresh set of eyes and regulatory controls?

The HSE has a written policy for the reporting of irregularities by any member of staff who considers there may have been an irregularity leading to the misappropriation of funds or an instance of fraud. I am not saying that fraud took place. Have there been instances of whistleblowing in the past three to ten years?

Have whistleblowers reported that excessively generous pay practices have been paid out? If so, has this been queried by anybody in the HSE? Has it been raised at senior organisational level, or with the Department or the Minister? The first two people I heard raising this issue were my colleagues, Senators Colm Burke and Tony Mulcahy. I wonder why this was not brought into the public domain at a much earlier stage.

Anybody who visits a hospital will know that car parking charges at hospitals generate a great deal of revenue.