Irish Examiner View: HSE procurement shambles is a national embarrassment
One euro in every four of the revenue provided by taxpayers is spent on health.
It seems only a moment ago that the health minister Jennifer Carroll MacNeill was telling us briskly that current high rates of health spending are “not sustainable.”
In fact, it was last month, shortly before Budget 2026 saw an injection of €1.5bn, or 6.2%, on top of this year’s expenditure which will be an eye-watering €26bn. One euro in every four of the revenue provided by taxpayers is spent on health.
In her effort to structure our expectations the minister had something to say about the need to ensure efficient spending and the difference between capital and current — people-based — budgets.
We are all used to the notion that public health is a sector where citizens have to develop a certain level of cognitive dissonance: The ability to carry two, and possibly more, mutually contradictory ideas in our heads without being driven to distraction and possible insanity by them.
But how do we come to terms with information provided to the Public Accounts Committee this week that the HSE paid €15m for the provision of respiratory sensors to a company without a contract?
In a tense hearing alongside his senior colleagues the outgoing chief executive Bernard Gloster described the non-compliant procurement issue — which saw up to a €7m loss incurred in terms of overpayments to a company in liquidation — as being “one of the most defining collapses of corporate governance you could imagine.”
Granted Mr Gloster is leaving. A successor is yet to be announced. And it is always tempting in such circumstances to post the odd comment for posterity, but we cannot imagine that this is what Mr Gloster might have had in mind.
It indicates a level of profligacy and lack of due diligence within the organisation which would not be out of place in a banana republic rather than an important — perhaps the most important — Irish public body.
The State’s financial watchdog, the Comptroller and Auditor General, Séamus McCarthy reported that the HSE had lost just under €34m on personal protective equipment and vaccines which will expire before they can be used.
But we are not the first, and won’t be the last, country to be financially exposed by the challenges of pandemic and plague.
The rap sheet is more worrying than this.
TDs were told that the HSE spent at least €132m on services in 2024 — nearly 10% of its total spend — without formal contracts in place.
At the troubled University Hospital in Limerick, over €2m was passed across to companies owned by HSE employees within the hospital itself without any formal undertakings being exchanged.
This was part of the attempts to reduce the waiting lists for which the establishment has become notorious.
In total these “one hand washing the other” arrangements with companies owned or part-owned by its own employees cost the taxpayer €14.2m, none of it put it out for competitive tender.
In a multi-million spend on respiratory sensors with the subsequently liquidated company Mr Gloster acknowledged that the HSE had no idea what stock it was receiving in return despite making routine payments every quarter for four years dating back to the start of covid.
One invoice worth €723,000 was paid twice by two separate HSE sections with “no hope” of loss recovery.
The provision had been “well motivated” said Mr Gloster, which is the sort of piffle which might have been fully interrogated in a properly constituted covid inquiry rather than the window dressing we are undertaking.
No one is likely to be held accountable. The individuals responsible have left the HSE. The discrepancies were only noticed at the instigation of a grievance by the company.
“Nobody called it. Nobody said stop,” said Mr Gloster.
Health is Ireland’s second biggest spending department and seems to rely on procurement rules which would not be out of place in Ruritania’s Ministry of Finance.
The taxpayers deserve much better than this national embarrassment.
It’s not always widely appreciated that the writer CS Lewis, whose crossover children’s classic was first published 75 years ago this week, was born in East Belfast, spent his formative years in the North, and was a frequent return visitor to the island of Ireland.
It’s interesting to speculate what inspiration he drew from this country and his beloved mountains of Mourne in creating Narnia, the realm under the icy control of the White Witch in which it was “always winter but never Christmas” and where the key to capturing the heart of a trusting child was Turkish delight, a commodity barely known in austere, sugar-rationed, post-war years.
Lewis, whose books are famously a Christian allegory often missed in their early years by children who simply regard it as a ripping yarn, was the author who opened the door for many. Through it have walked such as JK Rowling, Julia Donaldson, and Roald Dahl.
His closest heir, Philip Pullman, will see the final episode of his magisterial series — — published next Thursday.
Belfast, which has a square populated with sculptures of characters from Narnia, can expect a resurgence of interest in Lewis.
Film director Greta Gerwig is bringing two of his stories to Netflix.
Prepare to make friends again with Lucy the Valiant, Edmund the Just, Susan the Gentle, and Peter the Magnificent.
The annual reveal of the programme for the Cork International Film Festival — the oldest, and very best, of these events in Ireland — is one of those occasions that signify the beginning of the path in to Christmas.
This year is particularly special as the film festival marks its existence for three score years and 10, that Biblical lifespan allocated, in theory, to us all.
The festival first hove in to view as part of the An Tóstal cultural initiative and was held in May during its infancy.
Its founder, Dermot Breen, went on to become Ireland’s film censor, in the 1970s, but his imaginative stewardship of the festival helped to establish Cork as a name that can compete with Berlin, Sundance, and Venice’s Art Biennale for the attention of movie-makers and discerning audiences.
The current patron, the celebrated British producer David Puttnam, in his notes for this year’s launch, talks of the importance of such events in the age of “algorithmic entertainment”.
He lauds the Cork festival as “a place to come together and experience collective joy or anguish or hope or empathy or laughter”.
And there is a plenitude of options to wring the emotions from the discerning film fan, or to satisfy someone simply seeking entertainment.
To mark the shared anniversary of the Disney classic — a love story between a cocker spaniel and a mixed-breed terrier — the Everyman Theatre has made the brave decision to allow its audience members to bring their dogs in with them.
The tradition of hard-edged documentaries is maintained with the 90-minute feature , from the acclaimed Belfast director Alison Miller.
It is fitting that the main event, , which opens the festival at the Everyman Theatre on November 6 at 7pm, should feature Cork’s leading man. That, with the greatest of respect to Cillian Murphy and the fast-rising Saipan star Éanna Hardwicke, is Roy Keane.
Saipan is the story of Keane’s schism with manager Mick McCarthy at the training camp for the 2002 World Cup, which divided the nation. McCarthy is played by Steve Coogan and Keane by Hardwicke.
You would get short odds for betting which side movie-goers on the banks of the Lee will be cheering.
The Irish film industry seems to be having a moment, with its stars and stories recognised around the globe, and events such as the film festival providing inspiration for young talent.
We might like to pause, then, and reflect on the news report produced recently by our education correspondent, Jess Casey, which warned that the Republic’s new courses in drama, film, and theatre — to be examined for the first time in 2027 — are being badly hampered by delays and shortages of equipment.
Lights, cameras, sound decks, editing software, and computers are all tools of the trade.
David Puttnam does his bit to support young filmmakers through the Puttnam Scholars programme.
Perhaps some of our many stars may also feel like helping out, if gaps are drawn to their attention.
In an industry said to be worth about €1bn to the Republic, encouraging the talent of tomorrow is a sound investment.
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