The recent status report authored by John Dalli on Mater Dei hospital has certainly fuelled debate about how things are run there.

The general justified grumbling by patients of having to wait for endless hours to be seen does highlight the lack of adequate hospital management skills.

The nation should express its gratitude to all the nursing and medical staff at Mater Dei and I take this opportunity to do that.

I have always believed that the lack of sound people management at Mater Dei is the key issue.

Yet, having a vibrant and conscientious nurse does not necessarily translate into a good first line or divisional manager.

I fully agree with Mr Dalli’s recommendation that local staff should be trained in hospital management.

However, I strongly believe that rather than sending the staff abroad, we could very easily create training programmes within the Faculty of Economics, Management and Accountancy.

Such training programmes could entail bringing over visiting staff, as happens in the Department of Banking and Finance, when internationally respected academics come over from the University of Wales in Bangor to train our undergraduate students reading banking and finance.

What really worries me more than the lack of management skills are the revelations about the sorry state of financial accountability within Mater Dei.

Anyone thinking of being cheeky with public finances would think twice of tampering with a CPA’s professional integrity

Acknowledging that no plant register exists is disturbing. Getting to know suppliers of medical equipment were paid twice for the same stuff is unspeakable.

It seems such “mistakes” am-ount to a staggering €250 million. Just imagine what the previous administration could have achieved by installing adequate controls to stop this haemorrhage and put the public coffers to better use.

In a nutshell, these things happen because the organisation in question lacks good stewardship.

As a nation we imported our accounting model from that of our last foreign ruler, the UK.

Although that is considered to be a misfortune because that model does not fit into our culture, the British are staunch supporters of stewardship accounting.

I strongly believe in it and consider myself to be a champion in promoting good stewardship whatever I get involved in.

Good stewardship accounting entails that the person entrusted with managing a set of assets gives an account of what has happened to those assets.

Have they been put to the best possible use? That would then be a measure of performance. Are they still in existence? Have any been disposed of? Do we need to buy new ones to be more efficient?

A set of financial statements would give all the answers to the questions I have bounced off here.

So the next question would be, who might be the ideal person to be entrusted as a steward at Mater Dei? It should be nothing less and nothing more than a fully fledged accountant, bearing the initials CPA, which mean Certified Public Accountant, after his or her name.

I have a gut feeling that such an important institution, which by its very nature is a public interest entity, lacks the services of a fully qualified accountant.

Each and every CPA warrant holder would be loyal to the accountancy profession.

I admit that we are all humans but at least anyone thinking of being cheeky with public finances would think twice of tampering with a CPA’s professional integrity.

The notion of having qualified accountants within the public service is a crucial one if the present Labour government is to be able to effectively implement each year’s budget.

More importantly, by doing so the government would be increasing its chances of reducing the public deficit.