HSE ‘had no control’ over €60m fund

AN internal audit of the controversial €60 million SKILL training fund has found that the HSE, which should have been administering it, effectively had no control as money was wasted and corporate governance was breached.

This Thursday, the HSE, the Department of Health and the Department of Finance will appear before the Dáil’s Public Accounts Committee to explain what committee chairman Bernard Allen has already acknowledged is a series of “frightening shortcuts in procedures” and “a total breakdown in governance”.

Money was pumped into the fund by the Department of Health and then the HSE between 2002 and 2009.