HSE spent €42m on third-party covid management

Pricewaterhouse Coopers was contracted to procure PPE during the pandemic.

The HSE paid almost €42m to external consultants to deal with covid-19 management and reaction over two years.

As part of its “emergency response plan”, the HSE outsourced a number of services including covid swabbing, which amounted to multi-million euro contracts.

Labour TD Sean Sherlock questioned whether the HSE calculated the value for money of such a high level of spending.

The amount, paid out in 2020 and 2021, included work around strategic workforce planning, support to contact tracing centres, communications and the development of covid-19 reporting dashboards.

The HSE said the spending does not include consultancy services that were used for “business-as-usual” functions.

In total, €18.9m was spent in 2020 and €22.7m in 2021.

The spend included a €12.5m payment to Ernst and Young business advisers in 2021 for a number of services including capacity planning and analysis; covid-19 testing and tracing system services as well as strategic workforce planning. A further €7.6m was paid out to the company.

Deloitte Ireland received €2.8m in 2020 and €1.2m in 2021 for services including covid-19 testing and tracing system services as well as consulting resources to advance laboratory initiatives.

Pricewaterhouse Coopers was contracted to procure PPE, and for modelling and forecasting and was over €5.7m over two years.

Mr Sherlock said: “Until we have absolute transparency justifying why so many management consultant firms are needed to assist the HSE, it’s hard not to be suspicious that a lazy culture has grown around procuring services externally when resources could be found internally if senior managers within the HSE managed their responsibilities with more diligence.”