Róisín Shortall (Dublin North West, Social Democrats) | Oireachtas source

Okay, but it is not exactly clear what the controls are. Mr. Watt spoke about overruns across all of the hospitals. Is that data available in regard to the voluntaries? The other thing Mr. Watt referred to is the clinical directors. The clinical directors used to report to the HSE.

As I understand it, they report to the hospital groups and the reports are few and far between. Would Mr. Watt accept that there is a governance gap there with regard to the very substantial expenditure in the voluntaries? Mr. Watt said earlier that we do not know, for example, what the cost of a hip operation is in hospital A compared to hospital B. There seems to be a lack of drilling down into actual costs and the cost base.