Mr. Stephen Mulvany:

No. There are certain tasks, such as the review of the financial statements. As Mr. Cregan said, whether one does it centrally by the core of the HSE or centrally by one of the CHOs, preferably the one that is the lead CHO for that organisation, the issue is to do it once and to tell the rest of the organisation. The vast bulk of our voluntary organisations are not big enough to extend beyond one of our nine CHOs, but some very definitely are and some potentially even extend to all of them. That is just the nature of the business.

It is imperative for the more important parts of governance that the key relationship, which is covered in schedule 2, is between the local community health care organisation, CHO, and the local part of the service provider to ensure there is real governance across the service, regardless of what other tasks can be done centrally. If a large service provider has only signed in seven of eight CHOs where it happens to operate in all of them, then it has not completed the process. That is the reality.