HSE retiree plays down €300,000 contracts

THE health service official given two non-tendered contracts worth almost €300,000 by a state group he chaired months before leaving the public sector has defended the cost, saying “some of it went on VAT”.

Speaking to the Irish Examiner on Sunday, Pat Harvey said this and other factors should be considered when the unvetted projects — one of which had no funding, resulting in the diversion of other funds — are examined.

Mr Harvey is a former chairman of the defunct HSE Employers Agency (HSE EA); former chief executive of the North Western Health Board (now the HSE North West); former chairman of the personnel, payroll and related systems project; and former general manager of Sligo and Letterkenny hospitals.

Since last October, he has also been chairman of the Croke Park Agreement’s cost-cutting group, the implementation body on health sector reform.

Mr Harvey retired from the HSE in September 2005, and received a “severance gratuity” of €194,655, a €60,934 “ex-gratia payment” and an annual €64,855 pension.

His business, Harwyn Management Consultants, which Company Registration Office documents confirm was set up by Mr Harvey on June 3, 2005, received two contracts from the HSE EA in early 2006 worth €295,526.

A HSE internal audit highly critical of this group’s spending between January 2006 and December 2009 confirmed there was “no explicit funding” for one of these non-tendered projects.

The same audit found that “funds amounting to €187,000 were transferred from other groups” to finance the project, a report found in December 2008.

Mr Harvey said the costs included payments by his firm to other people who worked on the contracts.

He said he did not receive the full fee, as “some of it went on VAT”.

He also said he was not aware of the possibility of the projects before his retirement, as he had taken leave for most of 2005.

Internal HSE investigations on the expenditure of the HSE EA said the lack of any tendering process for the contracts was a breach of HSE finance and governance regulations.

Mr Harvey said management and unions decided on who received the contracts after agreeing to the former HSE EA chair’s name.