Senior healthcare professionals including consultants created private companies and diverted patients from public waiting lists to those companies, with €14.2 million paid in one year alone from University Hospital Limerick (UHL), the Dáil has heard.
Aontú leader Peadar Tóibín said it was a “major conflict of interest for anybody in a public role to do this in relation to their own business”.
The Meath West TD cited UHL, which “was found not to have conducted an open procurement process with €14.2 million paid to these types of providers in just one year, 2023”.
He cited one case in which a consultant created a private firm to read scans and “used the hospital public waiting lists to then funnel work through rostering into his own private company”.
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In a parliamentary reply he received, Minister for Health Jennifer Carroll MacNeill told Mr Tóibín that an internal audit ascertained that private companies were used to provide additional services “and there was a major breakdown in terms of compliance and in relation to value for money as well”, Mr Tóibín said.
Management confirmed there were “no dedicated procurement functions within the group”.
Two private providers were owned or part-owned by two separate UHL employees, and a third company was owned by a HSE employee of another hospital, he said.
Hitting out at the Government’s policy on “pay and numbers”, Mr Tóibín said there was an effective recruitment embargo. He called on the Government to end the embargo and “the practice of public staff creating private companies and following patients”.
Replying for the Government, Minister for Public Expenditure Jack Chambers said at the request of the Minister for Health, the HSE chief executive has initiated a detailed survey of all insourcing activity within the HSE.
All insourcing has been paused “where existing staff are hired, engaged or paid by separate entities to work on initiatives” in their area of work.
“Only insourcing where the HSE directly engages its own staff through payroll can continue until this survey is completed,” the Minister said.
He said the HSE chief executive had instigated the review not just because of these concerns “but also due to broader concerns about how it is operating, and value-for-money considerations in relation to the instruction to pause work for existing staff hired or engaged by separate entities to work on initiatives in the workplace”.
Mr Chambers pointed out that “under an initiative to reduce waiting lists, the HSE can outsource to private hospitals”. There is also “a focus on deploying additional weekend evening and out-of-hours activity to reduce overall waiting lists”.
