Mr. Joe Ryan:

The review identified that almost all of the section 38s reviewed would not have been compliant. The framework we have in place now, where they make a return each year with their compliance statements, requires the boards of these organisations to review their procurement practices and make a declaration in that regard. It is quite a binary test, in other words, one is either compliant or non-compliant, and there is no such thing as being substantially compliant. This means the numbers in terms of compliance are quite low. However, in monitoring the compliance from the point at which we did the review, we believe there have been significant improvements, first, in terms of the boards' own awareness of public procurement rules and understanding of what the obligations are in terms of spending public money, and, second, the control systems they are putting in place.

In terms of what HSE is doing about it, our own HBS, or health business services, procurement service is engaging with all of the section 38s affected, and it is running seminars and training sessions with them in terms of bringing their staff up to speed around procurement. We have also made available to them the PAS procurement system, which shows all of the contracts that are in place for both the HSE and the Office of Government Procurement around the kind of goods and services they procure.

While the numbers look quite startling and most would be non-compliant, we believe they are on a journey towards being compliant. Indicative of that would be that the number of organisations that have declared themselves compliant since the review has gone down, and they are saying they are non-compliant. While that might seem perverse, it is simply becasue they have a heightened awareness of what it means to be compliant or not. We think that is a journey towards actually improving over time. As we establish the contract management support units, CMSUs, that will assist them in this regard.