Delays in developing a new procurement system for the Health Service Executive (HSE) 10 years after bad practices were flagged are potentially bleeding millions of euro from the health system, the Oireachtas spending watchdog has heard.
Chairman of the Public Accounts Committee (PAC) Brian Stanley said it was a “serious concern” and “totally unacceptable” that the HSE had informed the watchdog that it would be another four years before a single procurement system was in place.
Comptroller and Auditor General (C&AG) Séamus McCarthy told the committee that he has been “signalling for a decade” that the HSE needed to have a single system rather than different departments using their own rules for buying supplies, which at times were “not compliant with normal rules”.
Previous reports by the C&AG suggested non-compliance with normal rules in up to almost half of all purchases.
The committee wrote to the HSE asking about plans to put a new system in place.
It was told that it would not be ready until 2024, and even then the system would only cover 80 per cent of supplies.
Mr Stanley pointed out the “huge sums of money” involved in the HSE’s annual budget of more than €17 billion.
Mr McCarthy said the HSE has acknowledged there is a problem and “are trying to improve the situation but it is just happening very slowly”.
Because of emergency purchases with the outbreak of the Covid-19 pandemic, it was likely that there will be a “very significant increase in non-competitive and non compliant procurement” this year, he added.
Matt Carthy, Sinn Féin TD for Cavan-Monaghan, said fellow committee members would be “struck by almost the audacity” of the HSE’s response that it will take another four years to resolve the shortcomings.
The likes of local disability organisations were “run through the mill” for procurement processes over just a minuscule amount of money, he added.
Mr Stanley said the HSE would be brought before a special session of the PAC to explain the ongoing delays.
Spend on private houses
Meanwhile, the Office of Public Works (OPW) is being asked to explain the spending of €374,000 in public money for security arrangements at eight private houses in the country.
The OPW was asked by the PAC for a list of contracts it had entered into during 2018 which did not comply with public procurement rules.
Committee member Imelda Munster, Sinn Féin TD for Louth, said eight contracts on the list involved security at private residences.
“It amounts to quite a substantial sum of money,” she said.
Mr McCarthy advised the committee that such contracts would “usually be maybe judges who are dealing with criminal cases, and security arrangements have to be put in place around their homes. It could also be a Minister or if there was a person in the public eye where by virtue of their employment there was a threat against them. That could be the circumstances for security arrangements.”
The committee is to ask the OPW for a breakdown of the spending.