Catherine Murphy (Kildare North, Social Democrats) | Oireachtas source

The funding gives us a historical insight into quite a dysfunctional pattern of service provision.

According to paragraph No. 19.28 on page 267 of the report of the Comptroller and Auditor General, €1.79 billion was provided for voluntary and community agencies, excluding hospitals. Paragraph 19.29 reads: "The HSE stated that it is establishing a strategic community costing programme to determine unit costs of services so that providers can understand where their costs might be out of line with peers for similar service offerings". Why would this only have been happening in 2016? This strikes me as something that would be good financial management.