Rónán Mullen (Independent) | Oireachtas source

I do not know what Senator Heffernan would say if somebody were to propose a referendum that would allow his right to continue living to be the issue.

The Leader might recall that in December 2014, I called on the Minister for Health, Deputy Varadkar, to investigate what was, in fact, a second round of accusations against the Saolta University Health Care Group. An information technology, IT, services contract had been awarded to Northgate plc, despite the fact that reports suggested that a Saolta group board member had previously been a consultant with that UK-based company. Indeed, it emerged that Northgate plc was the only company to be asked to bid for the contract, which raised all sorts of questions about the HSE's tendering procedure requirements and whether they were being followed. The Saolta University Health Care Group includes major hospitals in Donegal, Sligo, Mayo, Roscommon and Galway, and it had been in trouble previously for similar reasons. In fact, one member of its board resigned after the first controversy in June last year.

The problem is that the HSE is still sitting on a report, which is about the spending of taxpayers' money, more than seven months after I first raised the issue. The report was supposed to be published last December, and there have been articles in the press which suggest that parts of the report have already been seen by people in the media. The articles tend to suggest that tendering procedures were not followed properly and some of the people involved still hold responsible positions in health care in this country. It is not clear whether there will be any accountability on this issue. The fact that the public has yet to find out what is in this report is appalling. Taxpayers deserve to know what happened, whether anything inappropriate or illegal occurred, who was responsible in that event and what steps are being followed.