Oireachtas Joint and Select Committees

Thursday, 16 September 2021

Public Accounts Committee

Financial Statement 2020 and Related Matters: HSE

9:30 am

Mr. Paul Reid:

I thank Deputy Carthy for his comments, which we will relay to the staff and acknowledge in the context of procurement in general. We had been progressing the 2019 review in the early stages of 2020. Subsequently, major elements of our resources moved from procurement to Covid. Many resources were redeployed to support our front-line activities against Covid. Our assessment during 2020 was that we would do the assessment on the basis of the figures for 2020. We have done that assessment and it has been provided in the full report. We do not have the detail for 2019. We have made the pragmatic judgment that the best data available to be most efficient were for 2020. That detail has been provided to the committee.