Mr. John Swords:

Our organisation is becoming acutely aware of the demand on procurement and that there are more requirements for the way procurement is to be done. As a result of that, our numbers are an issue. As Mr. Woods said, we had lost 87 people in the HSE across moratoriums, excluding the people who were lost in the voluntary sector. From speaking with Mr. Lynch and our colleagues in Ireland East, I know that numbers are very low. We must resource this area correctly so that we can comply with all the requirements set out for us. The more compliance we get and the more areas we go into with frameworks and contracts, the better compliance we will have with all the regulations, codes of ethics, and so on. The tender process is key to that. Within that, there are safeguards that give greater assurance of compliance with the regulations. We have segregation of duties within the tender process. We have declarations of interest, etc., which are a requirement within the tender process. We have separation of the evaluation of the award criteria within that tender process. That is brought together at the end and the announcement and award of contracts are done in a very compliant way and are audited on a regular basis.