TDs will grill HSE after damning report into its procurement of covid ventilators
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The Oireachtas public accounts committee (PAC) is to haul the HSE in to discuss a damning report into the procurement of covid ventilators.
The Comptroller and Auditor General’s report, published last week, had been nearly two years in gestation and recommended that practical guidelines be put in place for public bodies concerning the making of advance payments to private contractors. The C&AG report found that:
- Millions of euro were paid, at the height of the covid-19 pandemic, to suppliers and sources in China for ventilators, many of which were never used due to quality concerns, and some of which were never delivered at all.
- No business case had been prepared in terms of the figure of 1,900 ventilators which the HSE had deemed necessary to procure in the months of March and April 2020.
- The HSE had placed orders for almost 3,500 machines at a total cost of €129m — nearly twice the number of ventilators approved by the Department of Health.
The C&AG also described as “seriously misleading” the manner by which the HSE updated its financial overseer, the Department of Public Expenditure, regarding what actual money had been spent on acquiring the life-saving machines, given advance payments for ventilators not yet received were not included in those updates.
The PAC is expected to deal with the issues presented by the report, with committee vice chair Catherine Murphy agreeing that “there needs to be something in addition” done to follow up on the report’s conclusions.
The HSE is currently in dispute with Irish company Roqu in relation to a deal struck for ventilators near the beginning of the pandemic as the country was experiencing its first lockdown.
Some €14.1m was paid to Roqu for the contract, which saw a limited number of ventilators delivered to Ireland by the end of April 2020. The delivered machines did not meet the quality assurance standards set by the HSE and were never deployed in a clinical setting.
The PAC hearing regarding ventilator procurement will likely take place in the early weeks of May.
The issue of ventilators has been discussed many times at committee hearings over the past two years — however this is the first time the issue will form the main thrust of a dedicated hearing.