Ahern says consultants ‘overused’ on project

TAOISEACH Bertie Ahern yesterday insisted the controversial health service payroll system was not “a waste of time”, but admitted consultants had been “overused” on the project.

The estimated bill for consultants on the PPARS project is €70 million, approximately €50m of which is going to Deloitte & Touche.

Mr Ahern said: “I believe [those overseeing the project] overused outside consultants and should not have a consultancy contract to the extent they had. Regarding the excessive costs to Deloitte & Touche, another way should be found and it should be re-assessed.”

He said the overall cost of the project - now estimated at about €160m - “is far too excessive.”

But he added: “Some 40,000 people are on the system and it is working.”

Fine Gael leader Enda Kenny disputed the latter point. Referring to a private memo in his possession, Mr Kenny highlighted a number of system errors. These included:

* a nurse in Cork receiving an overpayment of €3,000

* 43% of respondents in a Midland Health Board sample finding one or more mistakes on their payslip

* nurses in Wexford and Donegal being overpaid.

This is in addition to the case that came to light earlier this year where a €1m payment was mistakenly made to a health service employee.

Mr Kenny said nurse managers and staff had been “taken off overcrowded wards at busy periods to attend six mandatory four-hour courses” on PPARS, all for a system which “patently did not work.”

He also revealed that last Christmas there had been “a major social bash” costing more than €40,000 “to celebrate the ongoing progress of the scheme.”

Yet those attending it, Mr Kenny said, “were all talking not only about its shallowness and vulgarity, but about how money could be found to hold something such as that when, in October of last year, a good and decent man who lived 150 yards from Monaghan hospital died because he could not get into it because of a lack of money.”

Labour leader Pat Rabbitte said the project had been “a monumental cock-up, a Niagara of waste of taxpayers’ money”, but the Taoiseach would not admit it.

“How can (Mr Ahern) grow so far removed from people who get up at 6.30am to commute long distances to work to pay their taxes and stand over his Government wasting their money in this fashion?” he asked. “How is it that no minister in his Government ever takes responsibility for anything?”

But Mr Ahern insisted PPARS should not be scrapped. “They should continue to try to develop the system so the new Health Service Executive, an organisation bringing together 11 disparate health boards, has a proper system.

“They have not done it very well to date but they should continue to try to get it right and use money correctly. That is the right thing to do,” he said.