Stephen Donnelly (Wicklow, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I thank the Deputy for her questions. While I am going to get into the substance of it straight away, I am very uncomfortable with civil servants being secretly recorded, those recordings being given to newspapers and then those civil servants being named in those newspapers. I hope we are all on the same page on this. Civil servants must challenge the agencies, in this case the HSE. They must challenge the Government and Ministers and Ministers of State, like the Minister of State, Deputy Butler, and me. This kind of activity can lead to a chilling effect. It turns out I have been recorded - I think it was reported yesterday - or meetings I was at were recorded. I just wanted to make that point. The substance of this is serious nonetheless. As for some of the reporting, the facts simply do not back it up and some of the comments made were simply inaccurate. I understand some of the material is recordings and some of it is contemporaneous notes of what people say other people had said to them, so it could have been fourth-hand before it got into the newspapers.

On the fake targets, I do not accept that. Deputy Cullinane and I just talked about it. I make no apologies for setting targets for healthcare recruitment that, if I am blunt, potentially make the HSE and the Department uncomfortable. I make no apologies for that. It is part of our job in Government and part of our job in the Oireachtas to push the system beyond what it might be comfortable with in terms of the public health service.

The prior year adjustment was not hundreds of millions of euro as reported. The latest estimate is it will be below €100 million and it is an accounting correction done each year because of cash versus accrual accounting.

The mental health commentary attributed, which the Minister of State, Deputy Butler, is very aware of, was simply inaccurate. The HSE in fact looked for €35 million, that amount was more or less given and then there was a one-off payment of €10 million to address some very serious Covid issues as well.

Nonetheless, significant work is required to modernise financial reporting within the HSE. The most important project is the integrated financial management project. It was launched several years ago. I would like to see it further along and so would the HSE. It was significantly derailed by the cyberattack. Obviously, Covid pulled everything but we must now redouble our efforts to have that system in place. I can tell the Deputy the board also is acutely aware of this. Last year it put in an important innovation in the form of a balanced scorecard for performance right across the HSE.

As much of the detail was simply inaccurate, the core question is do we need to do more urgently on modernising financial reporting within the health service. The answer is we do and the chief executive, the chair, the board, the Secretary General and the Department are all aligned on that need.