Beaumont hospital went €2.9m overbudget implementing new payroll system 

Beaumont will now be subject to a separate review of its finances by the NTPF itself, which had held off on doing so while the HSE’s internal audit investigation proceeded. Picture: Sasko Lazarov/Rollingnews.ie

One of the country’s largest hospitals paid just under €3m more than initially budgeted for a new payroll system after ‘underestimating the complexities’ of the project.

The new HR and payroll system installed at Beaumont Hospital in Dublin eventually cost €4.8m, against an initial budget forecast of just €1.9m, the Public Accounts Committee (PAC) heard.

Adding controversy to the overspend, the recently appointed director of finance at the hospital Francis Hanlon told the committee the spend had initially been labelled as compliant with public procurement rules, despite the fact that no public tender competition had been held for it.

Mr Hanlon said he had seen that the derogation under which the expenditure was labelled as compliant had been removed as being “not appropriate” after he had reviewed it.

Acknowledging that the €2.9m overspend amounted to “a significant overrun”, Mr Hanlon said his “understanding is that the complexities of the project were underestimated”.

Cork Labour TD Eoghan Kenny said it was "disgraceful" that Beaumont had not mentioned the overspend either in its CEO’s opening statement to the committee nor in any briefing materials.

“This matter would have been swept under the carpet had staff members in the hospital not made me aware of this massive overspend of taxpayers’ money,” he said, in reference to dialogue he had with sources at the hospital in advance of the hearing.

There appears to be a death of accountability and oversight within the board at Beaumont. 

Committee chair John Brady described the overrun as “extraordinary” and said it was “an issue that the committee will certainly be coming back to”, while chief executive of the hospital Anne Coyle told the committee that the issue “has been reviewed” and the hospital’s statement of internal control updated with regard to the “refreshed and revised opinion”.

Earlier, Ms Coyle told the PAC that Beaumont is is to run audits across all of its medical departments searching for “financial irregularities” after returning €25,000 to the National Treatment Purchase Fund over a double-billing issue.

Beaumont had seen its multimillion euro ‘insourcing’ funding suspended by the NTPF last April after it emerged it had billed the fund for consultancy fees which had already been paid for by the HSE.

Ms Coyle told the committee that Beaumont has a further 8 speciality sections which will now be audited by the hospital itself as it searches for further irregularities.

“We will replicate the exercise,” she said of the audit Beaumont conducted of its own rheumatology department earlier this year which discovered the €25,000 anomaly.

Asked if she thought it likely that issues totalling several times the figure discovered to date were likely to be discovered, Ms Coyle said she wouldn’t like to “pre-empt” the findings of the exercise.

We will look into all the other specialities. And we will be upfront and honest and take appropriate remedial action.

Insourcing refers to attempts by the NTPF to reduce hospitals waiting list by funding additional usage of hospital infrastructure and personnel for appointments, chiefly outside core working hours.

Chief executive of the NTPF Fiona Brady told the PAC that the decision to suspend Beaumont’s funding had not been taken light, adding that regardless, now that the appropriate assurances have been received from Beaumont concerning the oversight of the insourcing funding, that the funding stream would be restarted in the near future.