SHB broke rules on another contract

THE health board at the centre of an investigation into its failure to put consultancy contracts out to public tender was ticked off for breaking similar rules less than a decade ago.

The Southern Health Board’s awarding of €1 million worth of business to the consultancy firm, Prospectus, without any of the contracts going to tender, is to be probed by the Dáil Public Accounts Committee, following a highly critical report by taxpayers’ watchdog, the Comptroller and Auditor General.

After previously refusing to confirm the identity of the company involved to the Irish Examiner, the Southern Health Board last night conceded Prospectus consultants were granted six separate contracts in 2001 and 2002 that are now under investigation. As these contracts, including one project worth €580,000, did not go to tender, the SHB persistently breached EU procurement rules.

Describing itself as the country’s leading independent strategy consultancy, Prospectus was established in 1991 and is probably best known to the public as the author of one of the three reports making up Micheál Martin’s controversial health service reform programme.

But this €1 million tendering inquiry is not the first time the Southern Health Board’s consultancy contracts have come under the microscope of C&AG John Purcell.

In another special report in 1996, the C&AG highlighted the awarding of a £120,000 (€152,000) contract to another company by the SHB, without the job going out to tender.

The management consultancy firm in that case was appointed at Cork University Hospital in 1994 to carry out a study entitled Clinicians in Management Pilot Project.

At the time, the health board said the hiring of the consultants, without going to tender, was cleared by the Department of Health.

The report was commissioned as new management structures were being put in place at the hospital. As a number of groups would be involved in the process, the department agreed consultants should assist the hospital management.

“Both the department and the hospital were aware of the extensive work carried out by the particular consultancy firm which specialised in the health services area and, as they both considered that general consultancy agencies would have little expertise and little to contribute in this area, other tenders were not sought,” the C&AG’s report said.

Yesterday, the SHB said the consultancy firm referred to in the latest C&AG report (Prospectus) is not the same firm referred to in the 1996 report. “The case referred to from 1994, as outlined in the 1996 report, was not in breach of EU procurement rules as it was under the threshold of £150,000 (€190,000),” a spokesperson said.