Mr. Stephen Mulvany:

As the Comptroller and Auditor General mentioned, in terms of those payments over €25,000, we are continuing with the current process. In 2024, we achieved a 100% return rate, which was an improvement on the previous year, and a 91% compliance rate. As the Comptroller and Auditor General also points out, though, that only looks at payments over €25,000. We have now, therefore, started doing a sampling exercise to give us a 95% confidence level on all payments between €5,000 and €25,000 and between €0 and €5,000. This will allow us to estimate the overall level of compliance.

We also want to move away from that system, because it is a manual self-assessment retrospective process and it is quite a burden on the staff and everybody else. What the IFMS has already allowed us to do is to ensure we receive invoices into one central point. We now reject invoices that arrive without a purchase order because, obviously, the purpose of the purchase order is not to be an invoice to be paid but to order the goods. What we need to do progressively now is make the business practice change so it will allow us to ensure all purchase orders are issued well in advance. The additional and difficult aspect is to ensure all purchase orders are issued with the right level of line item detail. When they are received and goods are receipted, we will then be able to effectively trap whether they are compliant from the point at which the purchase order was issued and not to address the situation retrospectively. There is a big exercise there.