Colm Burke (Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

Following on from the meeting of the Committee of Public Accounts yesterday on the organisations which are getting State funding, I raised this issue in the Joint Committee on Health and Children on 17 October where there was an acceptance by the HSE and the Department of Health that there were irregularities in their three-page reply to me. Of the Health budget of €13.3 billion, €3.27 billion is paid out to 2,680 non-HSE or non-Department of Health organisations. Such a budget, 25% of the total Health budget, warrants a debate in this House. I would ask that the Leader consider including that in as one of the items for debate in the new year.

It is a great deal of money that taxpayers are paying where we seem to have no control. For instance, according to the Department of Health or HSE, the top eight organisations get over €100 million. They get €1.69 billion between them and the HSE or the Department of Health have no power to appoint to those boards of management, and that warrants a debate. It also warrants a debate when more than 131 organisations are getting between €1 million and €10 million per annum. Those are section 39 organisations on which we do not have the same level of scrutiny or the right to go in to cross-check how those moneys are being used. It is important that we debate these issues and highlight where there are inadequacies in the system of issuing this money and where there is a lack of systems for scrutinising how it is spent. While we should not interfere in any way with the work of the Committee of Public Accounts, this warrants a full debate in this House. We should have the Minister in, and even the Department of Finance, as regards the scrutiny systems that are in place for all organisations that get funding from any Department because serious questions need to be answered.