Matt Carthy (Cavan-Monaghan, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

Everybody who has seen this correspondence, in particular first-time members of this committee, would have been struck by the audacity of the suggestion to the Committee of Public Accounts that within four years the HSE will resolve an issue that was highlighted over a decade ago. One cannot help but be mindful of those organisations, including local disability organisations, that are put through the mill in terms of procurement rules and processes to get what are in the grand scheme of things minuscule amounts of moneys to provide good public services. It is just not an acceptable proposition that this committee can be told that bad practice has been identified for this length of time and that the HSE will take another four years to resolve it.

I understand that and I was going to make the point that the Comptroller and Auditor General just made that we know, this year, that the amount of non-compliant expenditure will probably be greater than ever, because quite understandably, PPE, for example, had to be purchased at very short notice. However, if there is an emergency proposition on top of a bad practice scenario, then it creates all sorts of problems as to whether we are losing potentially millions of euros from our health services, just as a result of not having the correct procedures in place.

As my proposition states, the committee needs to get clearer information as to why the HSE has not been able to address this issue to date. It is something that we need to keep on the agenda of this committee, including requesting a meeting and a hearing with the appropriate officials within the HSE.