Marc Ó Cathasaigh (Waterford, Green Party) | Oireachtas source

It is entirely reasonable for Mr. Gloster to say that the HSE does not want to write off any of that in the context of legal proceedings but there must be some expectation, without referencing any individual, because I am sure that is over a number of individual pots. That said, I can grudgingly accept that Mr. Gloster is not in a position to state how much we can expect to recover.

In terms of the €8.1 million that is not recoverable, I want to dig down into a case listed in the appendix involving 102 ventilators from China which are in quarantine due to quality-related issues and which were the subject of dispute resolution attempts. We are talking about 102 ventilators that were paid for but which could not be used because they were not up to standard. I ask the witnesses to give us a sense of where they came through. We had established suppliers which were tried and tested routes. We felt the need to go beyond established suppliers in this scramble for resources so we had three companies that were mediated through IDA Ireland and a further seven intermediary companies. Due diligence was carried out on six of those companies but not on the other four. In the case of those 102 ventilators, what route did they arrive through? Did they arrive through established providers?