Seán Fleming (Laois-Offaly, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

Any formal request from the Accounting Officer at the Office of the Comptroller and Auditor General would have been accepted by the Department. It is not for me to speak for an independent office, but I believe it would benefit from having, for example, a number of staff who could provide technical services internally. In addition, the office does not have any medical people even though one third of the public services it audits are under the remit of the HSE and the Department of Health. There are more than 100,000 people involved, between the section 38 and section 39 organisations and Government bodies. In my opinion, the office should have some people who are medically competent to examine those types of issues when they are conducting financial audits.