Mr. Brendan Gleeson:

On procurement, we had a discussion on this the last time I was in. The reality is that we have €100 million worth of procurement. We have about €3.5 million or procurement that is non-compliant. There is a bit of a legacy problem here because contracts that were procured in this way, as long as they remain uncompleted, remain on the register. It is an ongoing effort to reduce this problem and the figure is diminishing every year. A significant part of the problem is in our laboratories. A variety of issues arise in our laboratories. For example, sometimes, for complex pieces of equipment there is a single supplier. Sometimes, for an accredited test there is a single supplier of reagents and if the reagent is changed we have to change the accreditation of the test. There is a variety of issues but we are working hard on those.

In terms of risk management, the Department was among the earliest movers on the development of an electronic risk management system. The reality was that the system we had became a bit stale and was no longer consistent with the central system established by the Department of Public Expenditure and Reform. We have replaced that with a new risk management system. The Deputy mentioned the winding down of the committee. The truth was that we decided we would deal with risk management at the management board rather than having a specific committee. We have a specific committee now.

On the way we will deal with non-compliance, we have an accreditation review group. That group was established to look at all audit findings and it ensures that audit findings are followed up in a systematic way.