Bertie Ahern (Dublin Central, Fianna Fail)

We all know the challenges of moving from 11 health boards to one HSE. The review which the HSE is undertaking tomorrow will be to see where it has brought this system and whether it should continue in some other way to try to bring the payroll system and all the other functions together. It is clear the amount of money it has taken to date to do it in the way it has been following is far too excessive. The Departments of Finance and Health and Children have made that clear and the HSE accepts that. What it thought it could do in three years is not possible.

What is clear, however, is that one cannot have a manual payroll system for 140,000 individuals and where there is no proper recording of how many individuals work in the organisation and how rosters operate. It cannot have a management system such as that. The fact is it does not have a management system. It has spent ten years trying to get a management system. While I have not been in the former health boards or in the Health Service Executive trying to run the system, I acknowledge that to run the HSE and to have a proper health service based on the reforms this Government has brought in, we need a proper system. That is the right thing to do. This Government is entirely opposed to anyone abusing the way in which money is spent.

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