Watchdog to probe source of funds for €9.5m health board HQ

THE unexplained source of funding for a €9.5 million health board headquarters is to be scrutinised by a powerful taxpayers’ watchdog.

While new facilities lie idle at hospitals in Donegal and Sligo due to a lack of money for staff, the North-Western Health Board (NWHB) is still trying to find a way to pay for its plush headquarters in Leitrim built without permission from the Department of Health.

Initially, the plan was to alter and extend the existing building at a cost of just €900,000, but this snowballed into a project costing 10 times as much.