Dr. Ambrose McLoughlin:

I decided as Secretary General to bring in Mark Ogden to undertake a review of the financial control systems in the health service in June 2012. That was followed up by intensive work involving a reform board, which was chaired by Tony O'Brien and on which I sit. This is to look at the total financial control and management system of the health system in all its aspects. The first significant change in that was the appointment of the chief financial officer, Thomas Byrne, to take over responsibility for the totality of the HSE budget. My Department has been actively and fully involved in the design of the new reform system which will ensure the appropriate controls and governance are in the Department of Health, the Health Service Executive and other agencies for which the Department will be accountable.

In respect of the Department, I have commissioned a reform of the Department of Health and there will be announcements in due course about the shape of that. I have been actively involved as Secretary General in the reform programme in ensuring the Department of Health has oversight of, say, the new hospital grouping structures and is actively and directly involved in, for example, the arrangements in respect of the children's hospital and other developments. I can assure the Chairman that we are very actively involved and I would be happy to give him details of that as he sees fit.