Mr. John Swords:

No. There were 53 at the time and now there are up to 80. If I can take a step back, I will explain how the central procurement process came into being. In 2010 we had an agreement with the unions to introduce central purchasing across the HSE. It came to life in 2011 and, as the Deputy will appreciate, required the establishment of offices of central procurement and logistics to bring it into being. It took time to bring it into play. At the time we also had austerity hit us quite hard. In fact, we were sent the savings figures and asked to take money out of the system. When one goes that way and chases savings, one moves away from putting more of an effort into compliance and building one's number of contracts to cover all expenditure. One looks at areas where one can negotiate through agreements already in place to take money out of the system. We were very successful in taking out €250 million since 2010. That is a significant amount of money. It works out at an average figure of €50 million a year, which sum is not collective. When I refer to a figure of €50 million, I am referring to €50 million in cash.