Joan Burton (Dublin West, Labour)

Does the Minister regard as satisfactory the fact that the HSE and the Department of Health and Children should have been party to such a major error in the accounting system, the failure to distinguish properly between capital and revenue expenditure?

I am grateful for his explanation to the House. Does he regard it as acceptable that his explanation is entirely different to that which Deputy Harney, standing in the same place, gave to the House following the debacle when she stated that the previous guess was that the HSE would underspend current expenditure by €12 million whereas some €56 million had gone missing?

Will the Minister comment on a letter from an assistant secretary in his Department, Mr. David Doyle? Did he contact the Department of Health and Children and advise the Secretary General that it was the advice of the Department of Finance that an outside firm of accountants should be brought in to find out what had gone wrong?

Yesterday saw the announcement of a national health emergency as a result of PPARS and the unfortunate people on trolleys. Is an element of that emergency that the HSE and the Department of Health and Children seem unable to do what a first year accountancy student would be asked to do, to distinguish between capital and current expenditure?

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