Mr. Stephen Mulvany:

In the context of procurement in an overall sense, the HSE acknowledges that we have significant issues. Our statement on financial control sets out how considerable work is ongoing to fix that. However, given the scale and complexity of the issues that will take some years. In order to explain the fundamental reason, we would point to the fact that we have been unable in recent years, especially in the recession years, to invest sufficiently in our overall procurement capacity. We have addressed a significant amount of that. We have put in an additional cohort of 45 staff into a procurement sourcing department.