Brian Stanley (Laois-Offaly, Sinn Fein)
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I visit the issue of the integrated financial management system each time Mr. Watt is before us. I mentioned earlier that we are a high spender on health. That is good but we need to find out where money is going. As I mentioned to the witnesses from Department of Public Expenditure and Reform, Mr. Watt's former Department, last week, what matters to us and to the public is what happens in between the money going in - perhaps it is sent up to Miesian Plaza in an articulated lorry as it is a significant amount - and services coming out the other end. That is the puzzle. I know it is not simple, that there must be management systems and that there are processes in place. If you go to a meeting with HSE managers, you will hear all about it. There is a budget and then there are the services. I focused particularly on dental services. The witnesses might provide me with a detailed note on that.

On this integrated financial management system, at a meeting of this committee on Thursday, 12 June 2014, the Secretary General of the Department said: "I am pleased to advise members that a detailed business case for a new finance operating model, including the procurement of a new integrated financial management system, IFMS, for the wider health service has recently been submitted to my Department." He went on to say that it had to go to the Department of Public Expenditure and Reform which, as I understand it, rejected it. I do not want to go back over that too much. Dr. Ambrose McLoughlin went on to say: "Finance reform is the highest non-clinical priority of the HSE", and on the same day the former CEO, Tony O'Brien, said: "As the Secretary General noted, the finance reform programme is a key element of overall system reform in the health service." The Comptroller and Auditor General's office recommended this in 2014.