Verona Murphy (Wexford, Independent) | Oireachtas source

Good morning, everybody. I welcome Mr. Gloster and wish him good luck in the role he has recently taken up.

To be fair, the procurement exercise commenced before both Mr. Watt and Mr. Gloster took up their positions. Mr. Watt is the Accounting Officer and Secretary General and Mr. Gloster is the CEO of the HSE, so it all took place with actors who are not before the committee.

However, the committee does recognise that it was in a time, as the witness says, of impending crisis of unknown dimensions and proportions. We all accept that. That does not mean that we will not examine in it detail. The scale of the funding concern in the context of the overall budget may not seem a lot to the witness or to anybody that is operating within the €26.5 billion budget that the HSE has. However for the ailing agencies that depend on funding under section 39, €30 million would be like winning the lotto ten times over.

I heard what Mr. Mulvany said to my colleague in relation to planning and every other country. There was omission when the reports were provided to the Department of Public Expenditure, National Development Plan Delivery and Reform. Page 12 of the Comptroller and Auditor General's report states that the "report only included expenditure for ventilators that had been delivered and did not include the payments in advance and refunds received from cancelled orders". Who compiled those reports?