Mr. Tony O'Brien:

Deputy McDonald is correct in saying that there is a persistence. I should say I have made reference to this oversight group. This oversight group is looking at compliance with all the national financial regulations and the reason Mr. Mulvany will not have had this on the agenda of his first meeting is because he would be aware of the significant work that the procurement function is doing to address the specific recommendations of the Comptroller and Auditor General which, in my view, has had a very substantive response. What we now need to do is ensure that all of the buyers who were not abiding by the rules have not more excuses left, such as, "I did not know about the frameworks", or "I do not have access".

There is an established pathway to follow in the literature as to how one achieves procurement compliance. Those steps are being followed and the function of the assurance or oversight group is to provide assurance across the whole piece. The fact that committee did not discuss procurement on that occasion was simply a feature of the fact that there is such a strong focus on procurement at present already whereas we do, unfortunately, have some other challenges as well.