HSE aims to reduce payroll overpayments 

An HSE internal audit review of overpayments found that the Cork-Kerry region had made nearly €900,000 worth of overpayments to employees by the end of September 2021.

The HSE has established a national unit within its human resources division in an effort to reduce the problem of systemic payroll overpayments.

The move comes in the wake of an internal audit report for the Cork-Kerry region, revealed by the Irish Examiner, which detailed how a single employee at Cork University Hospital was overpaid by €416,000 over the space of nine years.

None of the overpaid money has been repaid to date, though the HSE said in the report that “negotiations are under way” between the employee and management. The worker remains employed at the hospital.

The new HR Pay Compliance Unit (HRPCU) is tasked with “monitoring overpayments on an ongoing basis” a HSE spokesperson said, including “reviewing the reasons” why such overpayments occur.

The HSE said any issues identified by the new payroll compliance unit which are regarded as being potentially systemic “are communicated to relevant managers to assist in ensuring that such scenarios do not re-occur".

The internal audit review of overpayments found that the Cork-Kerry region had made nearly €900,000 worth of overpayments to employees by the end of September 2021.

The audit made seven findings, none of which were deemed to be high risk. 

One 'medium’ level finding — which found that historical debts which could be written off weren’t being so due to inadequate reviews of outstanding payments — was labelled as being systemic.

Pension entitlement paid to deceased workers

One such potential write-off saw €37,080 paid out in pension entitlements between 2013 and 2017 to 63 former HSE workers who were deceased.

The HSE said it is currently implementing a “fully integrated” payroll solution, designed by a German firm, which was recently paid €3.9m for the delivery of a cloud-based software solution for the organisation

Regarding retrieving overpayments, the HSE said a person’s consent is not required to recoup outstanding monies, but in line with the HSE’s own financial regulations “communication and engagement is necessary”, with consent agreed “in most cases”.

“Although every effort is made to avoid such an occurrence, in the event that an employee/pensioner receives an overpayment of salary, it is the HSE policy to recover the outstanding overpayments as expeditiously as possible,” the spokesperson said.

They said that the HSE is obliged by legislation “to ensure that all employees and pensioners are paid timely [sic] and correctly”.

However, it has encountered difficulties in recent months in terms of certain payments not being made

It recently emerged that non-consultant hospital doctors, who move between hospitals as part of their training in rotations of up to six months, are forced to  endure delays in being paid, a fact the HSE apologised for.

Separately, many frontline workers — notably those in hospices, private nursing homes, and disability services — have yet to be paid their Covid bonus of €1,000 — three months after the even-then delayed payment first began to be dispersed.