Mr. Tony O'Brien:

I am sorry but I was thinking about the Deputy's first point and missed his second point. What I will come back to him and say is that we have taken a rigorous approach to strengthening governance. I think we did not start in the best place and it takes time to fix all those. Our statements of internal financial control are probably the frankest statements of internal financial control that will be found anywhere. We identify very specifically what we see as the weaknesses and what, in the year in question, we are seeking to do. We have followed through on all of those. This has to be judged in terms of where does one start.

There were two founding documents for the creation of the HSE, whether one thinks it was a good or a bad idea. One was the Commission on Health Sector Finance by Niamh Brennan. She set out what the infrastructural requirements would be to have a national statutory health executive and how it could function to the best effect in terms of financial systems and so on. I can say that was not part of the design of the HSE. The HSE had some inherent weaknesses when it was created. We are seeing the product of that and we are moving step by step to address those weaknesses. Without those step-by-step attempts to address these weaknesses, we would not be talking about Console today. Console would be carrying on in its own merry way, doing what it was doing and that would come out later. There should be some credit for the action that has been taken. I am not saying this is a good story but I am saying it is evidence of progress.