Kate O'Connell (Dublin Bay South, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I am not suggesting that anyone is telling lies here but Deputy Kelly, who has just left, has a famous line about the people watching at home who are getting teed up for the six o'clock news. For normal people watching at home, it is not acceptable or believable that Mr. John Connaghan, who was in the role that has just been described, was in Mr. Sullivan's position and that taxpayer's money would be described as noise here this morning. I understand Mr. Woods's commentary about crystallisation of the financial position, which could basically be summarised as the price of it. That is just HSE-speak for the price of the product. It is not credible for people watching at home that we had the top man in the Department of Public Expenditure and Reform doing shopping. His job is procurement and that is essentially shopping. We have a fellow charged with shopping for the country who is on the board and he does not see that this noise will have a knock-on effect on his position on the board and on his job doing shopping for Ireland. I do not buy that, even if there was no formal communication.

Mr. Breslin said recently that he expected the normal governance structures to be in place and he said just now that he did not advise the Department of Public Expenditure and Reform. Everyone with a head on their shoulders knows that somewhere along the way, the man who was in charge of the shopping, Mr. Paul Quinn, must have said that this is getting out of control, this will pull from other areas and he would not have enough money to do his day job in his board position. When Mr. Breslin looks at this useful document which we got at the Committee of Public Accounts meeting last week, which details all of the reviews that were done in 2018 and 2017, he will see that €200,000 was spent on reports in 2017 and 2018, starting in February 2017. In February 2017 there was a stakeholder review. In April 2017 there was a contract management review. In my mind, at some point before February 2017 the "you know what" was heading towards the fan and this exercise of spending €200,000 on reviews was a backside covering exercise. I am suspicious of the €200,000 spent on reviews up to then.

To follow on from Deputy Kelly, there was a gap in the reviews from July 2017 to May 2018. We are going around the houses here in the sense that obviously there are official emails and official memos but Mr. Breslin is taking all of us for fools when he expects us to believe that Mr. Woods, who is sitting here in front of me, who works for the HSE and whose job is to deliver the service, did not consider that his day job could not be achieved if all the money was spent on the hospital. It is not believable that the man who was in charge of the shopping did not mention it. Whether there is a paper trail or not, whether people secretly said it or whether it was in this noise situation, it is just not credible. I do not blame the Minister; he is being treated unfairly here because he cannot be inspired about what is going on. If people deliberately plot behind his back and do not tell him, how is he to know? It is not his job to go measuring the cable. This is our fifth or sixth meeting on this and we are none the wiser. We are getting nowhere because no one is prepared to answer direct questions unless they know they have themselves covered and it is very concerning because at the end of the day the HSE is supposed to deliver the service.

Further to that, when Dr. Gabriel Scally started his review, he met an information wall. How are we to say that PwC will not meet that same wall? I cannot remember the exact phrasing Dr. Scally used at the health committee. Why should we expect that PwC will get the information? Many people in here seem to be very good at referring to minutes. However, Mr. Woods is in a top position in the HSE and Mr. Quinn is in a top position in the Department of Public Expenditure and Reform. I do not believe they did not tell somebody before the Minister was told officially in June.