Health chiefs in dark on staffing levels

HEALTH chiefs admitted yesterday that they don’t know how many people are employed in the €12 billion-a-year service.

TDs expressed alarm over the revelation as they probed the disastrous PPARS computer system that was intended to solve the payroll mystery, but instead will leave taxpayers with a €195 million bill.

Health Department secretary general Micheal Scanlan told the Oireachtas Public Accounts Committee (PAC) that not only did no one know what staff levels are, but he could not give a date for when it would become clear.

It is believed that around 100,000 people work in the public medical system - one-in-20 of all wage earners - but TDs described the lack of accurate information as “appalling”.

PAC chairman and former Fine Gael Health Minister Michael Noonan delivered a stern warning to the health chiefs present, including HSE head Prof Brendan Drumm, that taxpayers were fast running out of patience.

“The taxpayer does not feel that he or she is getting value for money from this huge resource.

“It needs to deliver a service that satisfies the people who pay for it,” he said.

Green TD Dan Boyle, who questioned Mr Scanlan on workforce numbers, said the situation in the health service was “farcical”.

“It is really appalling that not only do they not know how many people they employ, but they don’t expect to know for a very long time. It’s a bit of a farce, they are now going to start talking to a lot of people for a long time to try and find out what they should know already.”

The PAC also heard that the health service is spending around €200m a year on IT projects, despite the massive failure of the PPARS programme.

The initiative mushroomed in cost from an original €9m to an estimated final cost of €195m by the end of this year. That project provoked a major political row last autumn when it emerged that not only was it unable to do the job it was created for, but that outside consultants had been paid €57m of the money poured into it.

The bulk of that, €38.5m, went to one firm alone, Deloitte and Touche.

The PAC heard yesterday the type of contract agreed with the company - a “time and material” contract which paid it an open ended amount depending on the time worked, rather than a fixed contract - was against the normal practice in the health service.

Appearing before the last session of the PAC in December, Mr Scanlan admitted no one knew exactly how much the health service is spending on computer system upgrades due to fragmentation in the sector before the creation of the HSE.

Meanwhile, there were a total of 386 patients on hospital trollies throughout the country yesterday. Of those, 185 were recorded in the greater Dublin area and the remainder in the regions.

Yesterday, hospital consultants claimed that Health Minister Mary Harney remains determined to bring the health service to its knees in her impatience to introduce a new employment contract,

She recently said Irish consultants were the best paid in the world and added that she was not prepared to wait indefinitely while negotiations proceeded on a new contract.

She has given a deadline of two months for the talks to finish or she will proceed with new public-service only contracts.