Mr. Colm Desmond:

I could not disagree with the Chairman. It is of serious concern for the health sector. It is a complex sector with very mixed quality of data available and very mixed quality of financial and other systems to assist us in our job. All of these issues contribute to ascertaining where the funds are actually spent and in the manner in which they are spent. It varies considerably across the services. The structures to monitor expenditure and to keep it under control are far from being perfect. Nobody would disagree that the matter requires serious consideration.

I explained earlier that we need to move to continuous monitoring to a greater extent. That would actually yield us the information and the control that we need as soon as it manifests itself. We hope having integrated care organisations in a more decentralised structure will mean that management will be more accountable. That can only be of benefit to us. It will mean that financial problems should be addressed rather than being passed up with someone saying: "Here is another thing that we can't deal with. You'll have to deal with it." We hope giving that degree of scope to local organisations in an integrated structure will assist in the level of responsibility and, in fairness, the level of capacity that would be accorded to managing budgets there.

The Chairman also mentioned -----