PPARS probe fails to find anyone accountable

A TOP-LEVEL inquiry into the €150 million computer fiasco at the Department of Health has failed to find anyone accountable.

The inquiry findings, presented yesterday to the head of the Health Services Executive (HSE), Professor Brendan Drumm, outlined the project’s difficulties but failed to analyse management structures or assign responsibility.

It came as another letter from the Department of Finance was released yesterday, raising serious concerns about the HSE’s financial management system, FISP.

The letter, written last month, specifically referred to the €30m that would be paid to outside consultants in 2005 and suggested none of the lessons from the PPARS fiasco had been learned.

The controversial PPARS project was overseen by Pat Harvey, a former chief executive officer of the North-Western Health Board, who retired last April with a redundancy package twice his annual salary of up to €140,000.

Mr Harvey was chairman of the National Steering Committee, which monitored the project and included representatives from the Department of Health and the Health Service Employers Agency.

According to the PPARS website, the steering committee was answerable to the HeBE, the board of the Health Boards Executive, which comprised the chief executives of the seven former health boards, three area health boards and the Eastern Regional Health Authority.

A national project team, under national project director Anthony Reilly, was answerable to the steering committee and HeBE and was charged with project development, implementation and support.

But a Department of Finance letter to the Department of Health last June queried the organisation of the project saying “it was not clear who was the senior responsible owner for the system.”

A senior HSE source also admitted that the project was “not as tightly run” and seemed “nearly autonomous” at times.

A HSE spokesman said yesterday that an executive group will now establish the long-term value of PPARS “in the context of the HSE’s national unified structure.”

Fine Gael yesterday demanded the Government take responsibility.

“In seven years, there were three ministers of health and one Taoiseach who oversaw the allocation, through the Department of Health, of €150m of taxpayers’ money,” said FG leader Enda Kenny.

The Comptroller and Auditor General is to present a report on PPARS in six weeks’ time.