HSE chief leads way with expense claims cuts

FROM business-class flights, lavish meals and chauffeur-driven journeys to Ryanair, no hotels and just two internal trips in six months — cutbacks, it seems, are even happening at the top of the health service.

New HSE chief executive Cathal Magee has not submitted any personal expense claims and has accrued the equivalent of just €2 a day in work-related costs since taking up the post last September.

Figures obtained by the Irish Examiner show Prof Brendan Drumm’s replacement has drastically reduced the add-on expenditure for his €322,000-a-year role.

Between September and the end of February, the former Eircom chief used the HSE’s business travel unit and credit card systems to pay for work-related costs of €28.74 in October, €149.60 in November, €91.20 in December and €119.00 in February.

The six-month total amounts to €388.54, with €213.20 of this expenditure the result of work-related car parking costs.

Mr Magee did not ask the taxpayer to pay for any costs in September or January.

The six-month costs include two internal trips from Dublin to Cork and Limerick for work-related purposes.

These were a €39.98 return flight with Ryanair to Cork city on November 8 and a €109 return rail trip to Limerick city on February 11.

The new HSE chief is also yet to claim for any subsistence, accommodation or miscellaneous costs at all.

In contrast, former health service head Prof Drumm was the subject of significant expense claims during his five-year tenure.

During the first four-and-a-half-years of his five-year term, the high-profile paediatrician accrued in excess of €43,000 in signed-off work-related expenses.

These included:

- €5,834.70 in business trip flights from Dublin to Toronto, New York and LA, all purchased in April 2006

- €919.01 for a lavish meal in the elite Chapter One restaurant in Dublin for “a high-level ministerial delegation from Grenada” who came to Ireland to discuss cancer service developments in November 2006

- €3,122.57 in expenses in 2005, €16,541.17 in 2006, €13,565.54 in 2007, €7,650.36 in 2008, and more than €3,000 in 2009.

However, it should be noted that Mr Magee’s basic salary of €322,000 is almost €100,000 more than the €228,466 figure originally planned.

This figure will net Mr Magee a basic salary of €1.61 million by 2015.