Seán Fleming (Laois-Offaly, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I thank the Minister for his short reply. Essentially, he has passed the buck. Everybody is responsible and nobody is responsible at the same time is the response of his Department. He has said he sets a policy but that it is not up to him to implement it. There is no point in having a policy if there is no mechanism in place to implement it. It is just words on paper if it is not implemented.

As the Minister knows, the internal HSE audit report on the 44 organisations was published in March last year and went to his Department over the summer, but he did nothing about it until the matter came up at the Committee of Public Accounts. His Department was aware of it. The Minister should have been making the line Department deal with the issue. That is his function. It is not his job to involve himself in the 44 organisations, but it is certainly his job to make the Department of Health do so. That Department has not got to the bottom of this issue.

This is not just a matter for the HSE in that we have seen top-up payments and salaries exceeding pay policy in third level institutes and in various other bodies.

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