‘Scandalous’ non-compliance with SIPO obligations in HSE, committee hears

A third of HSE employees required to make conflict-of-interest declarations are not doing so, a committee has heard.

Seamus McCarthy, the Comptroller and Auditor General, told the Public Accounts Committee that non-compliant procurement remains a “significant issue” for the HSE.

In a review of 28% of the HSE’s spending on procurement of goods and services, he said 9% had been procured in a manner that was not compliant.

“This is a significant non-compliant procurement level. However, the true rate of non-compliance could be higher because the procurement within the scope of the review may not be representative of the executive’s overall procurement of goods and services.”

Mr McCarthy also told the committee that the HSE’s internal audit report showed concerns around the procurement of clinical services by University Hospital Limerick and apparent insourcing arrangements involving companies owned or part-owned by HSE employees.

“The audit found that without undertaking competitive procurement processes, the hospital had paid external service providers a total of 14.2 million euros from HSE access-to-care funding to reduce waiting times.

“Within those service providers, it was found that two providers were companies that were owned or part-owned by the hospital’s own staff members, and a staff member from another HSE hospital was a director of a third supplier company.

“The payments under the three contracts total just over two million euros, even though holding a contract for the supply of goods or services to a public body is a standard category of declarable interest, the HSE was unable to provide required declarations of registerable interests from the employees concerned.”

HSE chief financial officer, Stephen Mulvany, told the committee that those working in senior roles in procurement had to make annual Standards in Public Office (SIPO) declarations.

However, under questioning from Fianna Fail’s Albert Dolan, Mr Mulvany said compliance with making those declarations across the HSE was only up to 66%.

Mr Dolan said: “So 33% of people in the HSE who have a SIPO obligation haven’t complied with it?

“If I walk into the HSE today, one in three people haven’t bothered filling out the form?”

He added: “That is scandalous, because if one in three people in the agency aren’t doing their SIPO obligations, then that means they could potentially have a declarable interest or a conflict of interest they are not declaring.”

Mr Mulvany said the HSE accepts it was an issue and said it was “improving”.

“It is up from the mid-50s last year.”

Elsewhere, Mr McCarthy told the committee that the HSE had written off 800,000 euros in depreciated value of an “asset” initially worth 1.4 million euros that was not used for its intended purpose.

The figures had previously been reported, but further information emerged when Fianna Fail TD Catherine Ardagh asked the HSE what the asset was.

Mr Mulvany said: “This was a hydrotherapy pool intended for clinical use, for clinical use for patients back in 2009, from memory, it was only ever brought into use for a small, small period of time, and eventually was used for storage and then written off. So it was a development which never really proceeded properly

Asked what was stored in the pool, he said: “If you think about it, when it’s not in use and there’s no water in it, it is a void space into which you can put whatever is appropriate.”

He said the pool had since been disposed of.

“It never had secure, sufficient staffing to run it. It was a project that was over 15 years ago.”

The HSE wrote off 800,000 euros in relation to the asset in 2024.

Mr Mulvany accepted the delay in writing off the asset showed a need to improve processes.