Oireachtas Joint and Select Committees

Wednesday, 27 November 2013

Public Accounts Committee

2012 Annual Report of the Comptroller and Auditor General and Appropriation Accounts
Vote 39 - Health Service Executive

5:45 pm

Mr. Tony O'Brien:

We have not had discussions with the Department about that at this stage, but we have already been having discussions internally about the exact nature of the environment we must create in the context of the 2014 service plan and the service arrangements that derive from it to beef up our ability to rely on the information that is provided to us, such as some of the things the Comptroller and Auditor General has mentioned regarding the duties of the auditors and, for example, the extent to which we may need to see verifiable confirmed data on payroll, including P60s and that type of information. In theory, the service level arrangements are robust. The challenge for us is to put in place processes that enable us to verify beyond all doubt that there is compliance. As Deputy Fleming said earlier, we have gone from an allegedly nod-and-wink environment to an environment largely based on trust, once people have signed. It is now very clear that we cannot operate on the basis of trust any longer and that we must have absolute verifiability from this point forward. The challenge for us is to create that environment and we are currently examining how to do that.