Cormac Devlin (Dún Laoghaire, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

Good morning to Mr. Reid and his colleagues. It is good to have them before the committee again. I thank them for the information provided to date. I will start with Mr. Mulvany on the Comptroller and Auditor General's opening remarks concerning the annual report, which discloses an unaudited figure of more than €1 billion of current expenditure. This was spoken about earlier but I was not here at that stage. The Comptroller and Auditor General stated:

[T]he appropriation account for the Vote does not report the out-turn for the mental health services, either in terms of delivery performance or of service-related expenditure. Reconciling the budget figures for mental health funding to the HSE's annual report spending figure for mental health is further complicated because of the different bases of accounting used. The framework of accountability for ... expenditure on our health services is therefore very complex.

Is there a way to streamline that for next year so the committee can get a better picture of the expenditure broken down by section under the mental health heading?