Mr. Brendan Gleeson:

That is a reasonable question and we had a discussion on this matter the last time we were here. To give the Deputy some perspective, which does not absolve us from responsibility, we have approximately €100 million worth of procurement in the Department, of which €3.9 million is self-declared as non-compliant. That is unacceptable. We have done a lot of work to improve our procurement systems in recent years. We have established a procurement office. Every division has a procurement liaison officer so that when procurements are made, they can guide people and explain the rules to them. There is an issue with the accumulation of contracts. Non-compliant contracts remain on the list until they are excised, at which point we move on. Overall, our level of non-compliant procurement is diminishing. Our objective clearly is to get that down to zero. We need to look at some of our systems. I will give the Deputy an example of how this might happen, which again is not intended as an excuse but as an explanation of the administrative inadequacies that might lead to this happening. If we have a dispersed laboratory service and it is buying laboratory disposables such as test tubes and so on, it is possible that people in different places could be procuring from the same company without sight the overall picture. That is something we have to resolve. A significant part of this €3.9 million was in the laboratory service. We are establishing a centralised procurement unit in the laboratory service so that every procurement goes through the same person and so that person can see what procurements are outstanding with individual contractors.