Mr. Paul Reid:

I accept fully that any percentage above compliant is a problem for us. The nature and reach of the HSE spend in terms of local and regional is significant. As such, the plans that have been put in place have brought compliance levels up hugely. As a public service who made recommendations to the Minister to establish the Office of Government Procurement, I am committed to public procurement processes. I know what savings the State can make from that. There is a bit about the spend at a lower level in the regions and how we get them into contractual commitments. It was a very big challenge in my previous role in local government also to get the reach and compliance levels. However, we are focused on it and accept fully that any percentage is a problem. Regarding the plan we have, we are not at the 80% level we set out to reach. That will certainly take us more time. I fully accept there is an issue. The sample of €2.2 billion is quite a big spend and scale and to put the complete wrap around all of that is the challenge we are facing into.