Mr. John Swords:

Looking at the audit at the time we acknowledge that was the position.

With our colleagues in OGP, we are ramping up. The OGP has been resourced to take care of all the common areas across the public sector. It is a changing environment, for procurement but also for the health service, and there are moving parts here at all times.

How does one tap the situation into getting the best possible outcome? I think it is done by system. What we recognised is that we have done our training. We started our training programme - we are going to be finished by the end of June - to do that. That is awareness. The second part then is about visibility of the contracts, which, I think, was part of the overall failure on our part that led to the 36% figure referred to. On greater awareness, it should be that the first port of call is to go to the system and check is their a contract in place and then take a reference to one's procurement organisation. What we have right now is a combination of that.

We have 124 staff of whom we know are involved in the procurement function and who are now registered on this system. From there, we will now introduce that to the new system of the hospital groups plus the CHO areas. That, on top of the assistance we will get from the OGP, is the basis of how we are going to tackle this. I would think a rolling programme of three years will see change. It will take that time before we could say we will have full coverage on all of our contracts.