Mr. Tony O'Brien:

With respect, the only person who has used the expression "paperwork" is the Deputy's good self. The processes I have talked about are much more significant than emails and letters. They are direct dialogue and meetings with boards.

Most of this set of organisations is relatively small organisations, true voluntary bodies, ordinary well-meaning but not always well-equipped individuals trying to do their very best for cohorts of people in a context where the regulatory burden we impose on others can be quite complex. We start from a point of assisting them to improve. That is the primary purpose of internal audit. Where we find barn door problems we take much more dramatic action. As the HSE, we could do one of two things: identify problems and have a process which involves eliminating them, getting the organisation into a better state while protecting its services, or the cover-your-arse approach, which, frankly, I do not take, and simply stop the funding because at some point I will have a difficult conversation like this one at the PAC and the people who are the beneficiaries of the service suffer as a result. We try to work with service providers to assist them in improving their compliance. That is why I say it starts from that place. If, however, we are not getting a suitable response, if what we find is absolutely unacceptable then we go a different route but also seek to protect the service providers.