Brendan Howlin (Wexford, Labour) | Oireachtas source

It is clearly a matter for line Departments to run their own Estimates, as otherwise we would only have one Department of public expenditure for running everything, which would not be right either. I will finish the point relating to the Department of Justice and Equality. We have allocated an additional €5 million for the first instalment of the Magdalen payments, which was not accounted for but to which nobody would object. The Deputy mentioned the €51 million, which is a gross figure, and there are savings being made within the justice Vote to make up a bit of it too.

With regard to drugs procurement, the new office of procurement has a new director of procurement and it works very closely with all procurement agencies, including the HSE. It might be worthwhile for the Oireachtas Joint Committee on Finance, Public Expenditure and Reform to invite Mr. Paul Quinn, the director of procurement, before it to go through that process in some detail. It is important to see the really remarkable things happening on the procurement side.

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