Seán Fleming (Laois, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I ask the witnesses to send the committee more information on the previous directive so we can better understand this one. It is the law and the health Acts allow this, but the Comptroller and Auditor General would not have highlighted if he did not feel it merited highlighting. Changing the deficit from the year from €283 million down to €86 million is a very substantial change in the bottom line for the year's activities. It might not seem big in the context of the €15 billion health budget, but is significant when we look at the bottom line and the surplus. That is why people would be concerned about that, so I ask the witnesses to send us the note on both those things.

I will move on to the State Claims Agency and I will work from some of the accounts in front of us. There is a short note there on page nine. First, the National Treasury Management Agency will be appearing before this committee next week, and a large part of that meeting will focus on the State Claims Agency and medical negligence. We need the most senior people from the witnesses' sides, whoever they are, to be here for that. I am talking to the HSE and the Department today, and to the NTMA next week, because we feel the demarcation lines are part of the problem, in that they make it nobody's problem. The Department sends things off to the HSE and what comes back is nothing to do with it and is outside its control. The State Claims Agency is trying to gather information, but is not on the front line where the accidents are occurring, so those boundaries are not ultimately helpful. Because the HSE passes it over there is not enough ownership of the problem. It receives a bill every so often and sends the State Claims Agency a cheque for a few hundred million euro each year. I know that does come out of the HSE's budget, but the HSE might feel the pain of the payments more if they were being managed internally to a greater extent. There has not been enough learning here. We are asking this now, because the meeting next week would not be useful without the HSE's liaison people with the State Claims Agency. I will leave that to the witnesses, but we want to gave a productive meeting. We started our work on the State Claims Agency a year ago, and we said we would come back to it after its financial statements, which we will have next week. We want to look at the State Claims Agency and medical negligence is the biggest element of that, and that comes under the witnesses' Department, so I am flagging that.

The HSE's accounts show that the outstanding balance for medical negligence is €2.792 billion, which is a phenomenal amount. During the year, the HSE paid out €318 million. What was the value of the new claims that came in? I know the State Claims Agency makes its judgment on how much cases are going to be worth, and in the HSE's accounts it only shows what was paid out, but there is no reference to that figure. Who knows that figure?