Mr. Bernard Gloster:

I spoke to the internal auditor yesterday. I know Deputy Cullinane will leave that process to go to its conclusion. There are many different views about what the €19 million was for and what exactly was expected. In any event, Deputy Cullinane is correct that the overall global target to reduce the waiting time to below four months was given and it did not materialise. I certainly would not be of the view that money we would allocate this year, or in subsequent years, for interventions or measures such as this would not be anything but regularly tracked and accounted for to make sure it is doing what it is supposed to do. We have put in place a new clinical lead in the spinal service in CHI. Because of the dependencies outside of the CHI, I have also put in place a dedicated national project leader in the HSE to capture all of the details in respect of spinal support, spinal surgery and waiting times. We simply cannot continue with the unacceptable position that we have.