Seán Fleming (Laois, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

We had suggested bringing in the HSE to our last meeting. We might now try to bring forward our meeting with the HSE on its annual financial statements, which is on our work programme for about five weeks' time. We will try to bring that forward as urgently as possible. If we have to swap something around next week, we will try to do that. The Department of Agriculture, Food and the Marine is due in next week. In my view, and I am saying this publicly to the HSE, it has now signed off its accounts and it has to be fully familiar with them. They have been approved by the Cabinet and presented to the Oireachtas, so HSE officials must be up to date and up to speed, and they do not need to do any further preparation as it is fresh in their heads. I am saying that we want to see them here, possibly next Thursday, and we will try to swap around our schedule and have the Secretary General of the Department of Health with the HSE for a full discussion on the HSE accounts on that day.

We will also discuss note 2 on page 194 of the financial statements, which deals with expenditure. It states: "The Director General (1 January 2018 to 11 May 2018) received total payments of €238,207 during 2018, comprising basic salary payments of €139,649 and severance pay of €98,558." Therefore, the outgoing director general got a severance payment of €98,558. I want people to be aware of that as well because it might have been in some people's minds.

We will bring forward the meeting with the Accounting Officer of the Department of Health and the HSE as urgently as possible to deal with this issue, rather than leaving it hanging there for the next five weeks. On that basis, we will not discuss the work programme other than to ask the secretariat to try to make those arrangements. We will move on without further discussion on our programme. We are running late as we have had to deal with quite a lot of significant issues this morning. I apologise to the witnesses waiting outside. However, there are one or two items that we have to discuss in private session and we will try to do that as quickly as possible.