Mr. Stephen Mulvany:

On the bank reconciliation issue and the 155 accounts, one of the basic checks is to make sure that the bank statements - there are separate bank accounts in all these local centres - match the ledgers they are keeping for each patient. That is an important control. In 14 cases over the two years, it is not that they were not doing bank reconciliations, which one could believe if one read some of the media reports, it is that they were unable to fully complete them. There were differences in 14 cases. However, if we examine the detail and separate out stuff relating to prior years, which I will come back to, there was a difference in four centres. They were unable to complete the bank reconciliation but in all cases the difference was less than €100 and it is being addressed.

Bank reconciliation is one of the core controls. The historic issues are being worked through. The fundamental principle is once it has been investigated, if it is not possible to determine exactly where the difference lies, the HSE is making good the difference.