Mr. Austin O'Sullivan:

A question was asked about how service level agreements, SLAs, operate. They are fundamentally divided into three parts. The first part is very straightforward; it is the quantum of service an organisation is to provide on behalf of the HSE. That arrangement pertains either to a number of people or a number of hours. The second part is the cost, that is, how much it costs the organisation to provide those services. The third part concerns the amount the HSE will actually pay. In the vast majority of cases there is a fundamental difference between the cost of providing those services and the amount the HSE pays. The HSE does not allow voluntary bodies to put the actual cost of providing services into their SLAs. They have to manipulate things to show the costs as equal to the amount the HSE is paying. It is very difficult for most organisations to get the chairperson of their board to sign off on that because it is not really true.