Audit finds breaches in health fund procedures
HSNPF was established in 2000 to forge working relationships between management and staff.
The audit found that there were serious breaches of normal procedures in hundreds of thousands of euro of funds handed over by the HSNPF to SIPTU. On five of those payments, a HSNPF official signed the name of the joint union chair which the audit said was “in breach of financial regulations and good governance practice”.
The audit refers specifically to three payments to SIPTU totalling €700,000 some of which were subsequently paid to other unions. It said four unions had received the money, but had not yet spent the funds and that they would repay the money to HSE. To date, in excess of €250,000 has been refunded to HSE by other unions, it added.
The audit found that €925,000 was paid to SIPTU in this way. Crucially money was put into the SIPTU National Health and Local Authority Levy Fund, the account already at the heart of controversy in the investigation into the €60m SKILL training programme. SIPTU has consistently claimed that was not one of its authorised accounts.
Similar to SKILL, there are questions over foreign trips taken by HSNPF members. The audit said initial enquires to the HSNPF indicated that foreign travel was not undertaken to any great extent but then details of 21 trips costing €146,480 emerged, five of which were arranged by SIPTU. The audit said “under no circumstances should travel for HSNPF officials or members be arranged and paid for by third party organisations”.
It also said any trips taken should be “undertaken in the most economical manner possible”. Yet on one trip to Paris for three members of the HSNPF and one HSE staff member cost €300 per night per person with two people staying four nights and one person staying two nights at a total cost of €3,000.
The audit said overall “it is not clear” why HSNPF breached its own procedures by making payments to SIPTU “without any evidence that claims had been submitted and properly validated and without any account of how the funding of €925k was expended”.
Meanwhile it has emerged in relation to SKILL that in June 2004 an annual target of 4,000 participants per year was established, yet by December 2009, just 8,977 support workers participated, costing €5,241 each. It would have taken until 2023 to get all 32,000 relevant workers trained and the cost would have been €167m.
The HSE had asked former IBEC head Turlough O’Sullivan to examine the SKILL fund. He found “very many shortcomings in governance indicating a serious failure by management at a number of levels”.
He also said there were “serious failures” in how the funding of more than €2.5m to the controversial SIPTU account was established.
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