Mr. Liam Woods:

The issue of something being ten times the price is an allegation, and we need to bottom it out and understand the conclusion of the investigation. Deputy Troy asked what monitoring process is in place and a number of committee members asked about the control environment for procurement in the HSE, so I will take the opportunity of answering Deputy Troy's question to answer the others also. I will ask my colleagues, including those in internal audit, to contribute where relevant. The accountability environment in the HSE is that we have a directorate under legislation. We have an audit committee with an externally appointed chair. We have a delegated management accountability structure to national director and group and community health organisation level in the system.

On the hospital side, gross expenditure of €4.8 billion goes through seven hospital groups, including paediatrics. I will start with the voluntary element, which is the entities that are not directly funded by the HSE. As I said in my statement, these are accountable through their own boards for their own governance, but the HSE has a service-level agreement in place with them which includes requirements to comply with the national procurement standards of the HSE. It also seeks the annual signing of a compliance statement with such requirements - not only procurement but other requirements - and this process has been in place. We will speak more about this if required.

There is an extensive set of financial and procurement regulations in the HSE, which specify how procurement is to be transacted, our requirement to comply with public sector tendering and our duties to our staff. There are codes of behaviour in our code of governance, which are legally set out as required under the 2004 Act. All of this information is on our website and we can make it available to the committee in succinct form if it is helpful. The code of governance sets requirements for individuals in terms of their personal behaviour. Staff equivalent to and above grade 8, which is middle management level, are bound by the Ethics in Public Office Act, with which committee members are familiar. The voluntary sector is accountable for its own arrangements and gives assurance to HSE.

More lately, as I said in my statement, the Government has adopted an approach of seeking to integrate the purchase of common goods and services throughout all Departments in pursuit of public value.

The HSE is a major contributor to that. Over €2 billion of total contract negotiation for goods and services within the HSE is now moved to the Office of Government Procurement, which is also doing similar activity with other Government Departments and entities. The HSE is directly contracting for direct health related product. The tendering the HSE will do in the future is primarily for health related product or technical and supplies products that are so intimately linked into the health environment that they require a direct health sector involvement. At the end of last year we signed a memorandum of understanding with the Office of Government Procurement regarding the way that relationship is to work and we are working co-operatively with that office.