John McGuinness (Carlow-Kilkenny, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

Mr. Moloney mentioned the HSE and we can take it as an example. Considering the amount of money the HSE spends, is it not essential for the Department of Public Expenditure and Reform to demand the type of IT infrastructure that would give the managers in the HSE and the Department of Public Expenditure and Reform the necessary information? I attended a trade fair when I was Minister of State with responsibility for trade and commerce. There are companies that excel in that area around the world and yet we do not seem to be able to get to grips with the provision of technological advancement to an extent that would allow us to say it is all working.

I attended the opening of a wing in St. Luke's Hospital in Kilkenny. It has single rooms and state-of-the-art technology which tells the medical professionals everything about the patients. We need to get to the point where we are getting all of the information from the likes of the HSE or any big-spending Department. What is the role of the Department of Public Expenditure and Reform in that regard. Does the Department of Public Expenditure and Reform get annoyed with Departments that do not deliver with the efficiency or speed it would expect, given the money they are controlling? Surely Accounting Officers across the board would want to have those systems in place so they could stand over whatever happened, what went wrong and right, and so on. Mr. Moloney can tell me I am wrong if I am, but it seems that certain bodies within the Civil Service are very slow and we do not achieve levels of efficiency as quickly as we should. If there was a single manager for all these Departments, I would be asking him or her what is going on in the Department and why is something not happening. Those managers could be moved on if they were unable to deliver. Is the Department of Public Expenditure and Reform concerned about the weaknesses around the financial reporting that is now necessary in respect of these big sums of money?