Mr. John Connaghan:

For the record, there is a €3 billion spend on section 38 organisations, with roughly €2 billion for the acute sector and €1 billion for the non-acute sector. The acute sector includes voluntary hospitals etc. I am assured that we have a comprehensive control and oversight mechanism in place. It looks very different from what I understand was in place a couple of years ago. We have a service arrangement in detail and an annual agreement with penalties for late completion in place for section 38 and larger section 39 bodies. We have grant aid agreements for section 39 organisations. Against that background, we have an annual compliance statement which covers things like governance, risk, pay policy, tax and procurement which comes from each of these organisations. Annual financial statements for the larger organisations are audited and approved. We monitor that through an annual financial monitoring return. The process that is in place is fine.

The Deputy will ask me how effective it is. One might have the greatest process in the world and if it delivers something, it is fine. All of that is good on paper. We then come to what we have put in place over the course of the past year, as I understand it. I can only go back to my knowledge from the past six months to a year. We have fully established a compliance unit at national level and we are in the process of rolling out the work of that compliance unit to more local situations so that each locality has the capability to have oversight and compliance locally. That also covers the external review for the section 38 bodies, which is under way at Deloitte. There are 40 reviews. Some 31 have been finalised and recommendations will be put back to the organisations. We are tracking these through. Lastly, we have internal audit. I have recently taken the decision to extend the internal audit capability for the HSE such that, when we come to 2019, there will be greater capability. For me, we have enough processes on paper. We need to make that work as we proceed into 2019.