Mr. Tony O'Brien:

The Console case is a particularly interesting one from our point of view. Even looked at retrospectively, it is clear that the services we were buying were being provided and at a reasonable cost. We were a relatively small part of the overall Console picture. Even if we had put significantly more resources into the active monitoring of the delivery of the bit that we were funding, I do not believe that would have precluded, prevented or eliminated the risk. In the other part of its business, Console could have done whatever it was doing.

We interface with many section 39 agencies and are connected with them in respect of only a fraction of their businesses. We obviously do not have wider regulatory powers or authorities. As we discussed at the time, there was a particular dynamic there. This was an organisation that was getting a clean audit certificate from a registered auditor. If we were ever to conclude that we could not rely on such audit processes we would have a fundamental problem. However good we are at monitoring the use of our resources, it would not preclude the type of thing that happened in the other part of that organisation's business. I do not believe that the HSE can get into the business of seeking to regulate beyond what it is buying. Our focus is clearly on ensuring systematically that we are getting the service that we are paying for to the standard we expect and at a reasonable cost in those agencies with which we have a relatively small relationship in the context of their total size. That is why we have tended to have a tapered approach where we focus more attention on those that are public bodies, or section 38s, and those with who we have a substantial financial relationship, which is likely to be greater than 50% of their activity or represents a significant sum of public money beyond a certain threshold. We have a tiered approach.

We have established the central compliance unit, which has 12 staff members but our focus now is on ensuring that each of our nine community health organisations, CHOs, has developed within itself the effective capacity to monitor the grant agreements for which it is responsible. We do not believe, given the wide distribution of entities that we fund, that this is sensibly done at central level. It obviously must be done to central standard and with central oversight, but it must be done on the ground. If we are funding the project to which the Deputy referred, it will have a relationship with the relevant community health organisation and no one at the centre will have particular visibility of that. It is really about developing capacity.

The CHO is a relatively new structure and needs capacity in a number of areas, of which this is one. In conjunction with the chief officers of those CHOs, we are currently carrying out a fairly intensive discussion to establish what they need to do their jobs most effectively and then we will have to go into the business of providing that to them.

Mr. Mulvany spoke of adding an extra 45 staff into the procurement department. That does take a little time in that we have to secure both the cash, the headroom and the prioritisation in order to do it. We are doing that against a background of competing priorities for staffing and so on.