Finance wanted HSE checked by accountants

The Department of Finance wanted a team of outside accountants brought into the Health Service Executive (HSE) last January to assess how over €56 million in capital funding, earmarked to be carried forward for use this year, may actually have been used to meet current expenditure last year.

The department wanted the outside accountants to determine quickly a full picture of HSE spending for the year.

The HSE had earlier indicated that its full accounts for the period would not be available until the end of March.

Senior HSE sources said yesterday that they were unaware of any approach by the Department of Finance for outside accountants to be brought in.

Official documents obtained by The Irish Times reveal deep unhappiness at the top level of the department over the discovery that savings on capital funding that had been earmarked to be carried over to this year could have been used as part of the current budget last year.

The documents also show that the department considered the issue to be more serious than publicly revealed at the time by the Government.

Tánaiste and Minister for Health Mary Harney has insisted that there was no hole in the HSE accounts, that no funding had been misspent and that a supplementary estimate to deal with the issue could be introduced this year.

Ms Harney has said that no service, current or planned, would be affected.

The documents show that on January 24th the second secretary at the Department of Finance David Doyle wrote to the secretary general of the Department of Health Michael Scanlan advising him to brief Ms Harney on the issue, as Minister for Finance Brian Cowen could decide to ring her directly.

Mr Doyle said senior management in the Department of Finance believed that "the line apparently taken by the HSE people that it will take at least another month if not more before the facts were established is unsatisfactory (to say the least)".

He said senior management in the department believed that if necessary "they should get a team of outside accountants to establish the facts within the week".

By the time the problem was notified to the Department of Finance in mid-January, Mr Cowen had already signalled in the Appropriations Act 2005 that the €56.4 million would be available for use this year.