David Cullinane (Waterford, Sinn Fein)
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We had the spotlight on this issue and, unfortunately, it is not the first time we have been here with a section 38 of a section 39 company.

My understanding is that the Office of the Comptroller and Auditor General carried out a broad report on this issue last year which touched on some of the governance issues. The findings of the Console report, which we might discuss in the work programme, were so bad that the report itself said that it pointed to potentially systemic problems within the HSE, that they were not just with the funded organisations but also in the relationship between those organisations and the HSE. That was not accepted by the director general, yet almost monthly we seem to have problems with funding in these organisations. This is serious because there is a potential conflict of interest. The report itself cites that issue. There are also questions around credit card expenditure. This has all come about on foot of an internal audit by the HSE. Is that audit public? Has it been published yet? If not, can we have a copy of it? My understanding is that St. John of God may also have been dealt with and that it was not just the hospice in Harold's Cross. There were other issues as well.

It is unfortunate that we are back here again. While we have dealt with this issue, it does not seem that controls have improved to any great degree. These things are still happening. This is not a section 39 organisation. It is a section 38 one which receives very substantial amounts of taxpayers' money. There is a difference between the two types of organisation and there needs to be a higher level of scrutiny because of it. We will come back to it in the work programme.

How many times do we have to be here? People are very rarely held to account. The Accounting Officer from the HSE will tell us that the problems are all on the side of the funded organisations. In fact, the internal auditors of the HSE were in disagreement with the director general in terms of whether there were systemic issues for the HSE. We have to deal with this once and for all because there is obviously a need to sharpen up governance arrangements. Perhaps the Comptroller and Auditor General can inform us as to what work his office did in this area.