Mr. Gordon Jeyes:

We are completely committed to shared services. Transactional services being provided elsewhere is a good thing but it needs to be part of a proper internal market where we are recognised as a customer not merely receiving the same service designed for somebody else. We now have financial systems and a payroll system that we purchased from health business partnerships and that works well. HR is a whole other debate. We still get HR services from the HSE but we need to have a system designed for our needs, speeding up recruitment.

In terms of legal costs, we have no involvement with the HSE. I manage that and I hope we will appoint a head of legal services next week. We are under-resourced and we have put proposals to the Department to discuss with the Department of Public Expenditure and Reform that we would have a more cost efficient legal service if we had competition among the lawyers who represent us and if we had what is called contestability - in other words, how would salaried people compare with payment by the hour. Our legal costs are outrageously high, particularly for the unreformed and unregulated guardian ad litem system.