Seán Fleming (Laois, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

We might schedule a meeting once we have seen the 17 accounts. It is definitely within the remit of this committee, as is everything I am mentioning this morning.

The next item is from Tusla, the Child and Family Agency. It has a clear audit opinion, but attention is drawn to expenditure on goods and services that were not procured by way of a competitive process, and weaknesses in the agency’s oversight and monitoring of grants to outside agencies. We will take up that issue. The HSE had some of those issues, in terms of monitoring grants to outside agencies and seems to have improved its system, so Tusla needs to do the same. We might come back to that Department as part of our work programme, and we can look at Tusla specifically.

The next item concerns the National Disability Authority. It has a clear audit opinion.

The next item concerns the National Cancer Registry Board, which collects and classifies information on all cancer cases which occur in Ireland. It has a qualified audit opinion, but costs of superannuation entitlements are accounted for as they become payable rather than in the year the entitlements are earned. That was not a clear audit opinion because it does not adequately or properly account for its pension costs.

The next item concerns the Health Insurance Authority, which regulates the private health insurance market and administers the risk equalisation fund. The next item, under separate accounts, is the risk equalisation fund itself. The fund involves an audit of €673 million, and the Health Insurance Authority regulates it. The risk equalisation fund, for people wondering what it is, is a fund that concerns the age mix and profile of customers of the three private health insurers in the market. VHI probably has older customers, so there is a transfer of funds, approved by the Health Insurance Authority, from Laya Healthcare and the other insurer, the name of which I cannot recall at the moment, to VHI which equalises the risk across the industry. A large amount of money moves around between the insurers.