CEO apologises for hospital buying €1.4m of services from staff-owned firm with no formal contract

Professor Mary Day  will add that on occasion, due to unforeseen circumstances, the hospital must 'balance the need for public procurement with the need to respond immediately to urgent demand for scans in order to avoid potentially harmful delays in the diagnosis and treatment of our patients'. File photo: Derek Farrell/© RollingNews.ie

The head of one of Dublin’s largest hospitals has apologised after the institution paid a company owned by its own staff more than €1.4m without a formal contract, but said the payment was driven by “urgent patient needs”.

Professor Mary Day, chief executive of St James’s Hospital, will tell the Public Accounts Committee on Thursday that, in paying €1.44m to the company for diagnostic services, the hospital “did not meet the standards expected of us”.

All services and goods procured by a public body like St James’s over a threshold of €50,000 are required to be sent for public competition.

The issue at St James’s Hospital was first identified by permanent witness to the PAC Seamus McCarthy — the comptroller and auditor general — last November.

Mr McCarthy also divulged that the hospital’s employees in ownership of the company had failed to declare their interests in the company via an annual return, another legal requirement.

St James’s appearance at PAC on Thursday results directly from those revelations.

Prof. Day will tell the committee:

I wish to apologise on behalf of the hospital for the fact that some radiology services in 2024 were not procured through a public tender process.

“I wish to assure the committee that this was driven by urgent patient needs in cancer in particular, but also in cardiology, to prevent delayed diagnosis and to deliver the best possible care to our patients.”

She will add that on occasion, due to unforeseen circumstances, the hospital must “balance the need for public procurement with the need to respond immediately to urgent demand for scans in order to avoid potentially harmful delays in the diagnosis and treatment of our patients”.

The CEO will note that St James’s was the recipient of 28 adverse incident reports in 2024 due to delayed diagnosis resulting from a lack of access to the diagnostic services carried out by the company, adding that the price paid per diagnostic scan “was reasonable”.