Mr. Fred McBride:

I will give some headlines of what we will be looking at. One of the areas is where we have used agency staff in administrative and managerial grades. The original contract was meant to be solely for front-line practitioners - social workers, social care and the like. We have all had a very significant need for administrative and managerial grades as we have developed the agency. That is an area we need to address. We have commenced a procurement exercise to address this; it is in the region of €7 million.

The other one made headlines in relation to private foster care. We buy places for children from independent fostering agencies and they hitherto have not been subject to contractual arrangements. We have a process in place now to put them on a kind of framework contract, including supported lodgings as well; so that is in hand.

The other areas are around psychology, assessments and therapeutic assessments, often court-directed where if a HSE psychologist has not been available we have been forced to buy an assessment, essentially, from a private therapist or psychologist, many of whom, as I understand it, are employed by the HSE anyway, but do this privately. That is an area that clearly needs to be tightened up. We have plans to ensure there is a contractual framework around that.

There was an issue raised about security. Of course, security for some of our buildings may be security in a special care unit, residential unit or secure unit for our children. There are particular needs there. It is not just routine building security; there is a bit more to it than that. A new portfolio has been set up in health business services to address the expired contract-----