Harney defends €56.4m error in health

No money was misappropriated, no money was misspent and no money went missing, Tánaiste Mary Harney insisted in the Dáil yesterday in the controversy over a €56.4 million miscalculation by the Health Service Executive (HSE).

As the Opposition attacked the Government in a debate on the money, Ms Harney stressed there was "no hole in the accounts".

She claimed the Opposition "hear the sound of the wind blowing through the trees and declare it is a tornado bringing destruction on our houses and our lands". This was no tornado, she said. "The full estimate has been accounted for. There has been no misappropriation of funds. No one can suggest taxpayers' money has gone missing."

She said a supplementary health estimate might be introduced but "no health service provided to the public was affected by this last year. No service is currently affected by it. No planned service or planned capital project will be affected by this. It does not mean that some hospital, community centre or other health service will not now be built, commissioned or refurbished."

The debate followed the Dáil announcement on Wednesday by Minister for Finance Brian Cowen that the HSE had mistakenly believed it had €56.4 million left over from its capital budget for 2005, which it could not carry over and spend this year.

Ms Harney told the Dáil the HSE had provided an estimate in December of spending for 2005. They were forecast figures indicating capital savings of €56 million and current savings of about €12 million. Provision was made to carry €56.4 million over to 2006. In January, when the HSE did a report on the actual estimated spend for last year, the figures showed a gross savings of €4.5 million rather than €68 million.

Fine Gael's health spokesman Dr Liam Twomey said the Government's credibility was on the line and what had happened was "creative accounting". The HSE got it wrong. "It overspent by €50 million and the Tánaiste is now trying to rejig matters in January so that it does not really matter whether the money is spent as current or capital."

Labour's spokeswoman Liz McManus said that "despite PPARS, the leaking tunnel, dodgy Luas tracks and electronic voting, nothing has changed and here we are yet again dealing with money that has been misspent and waste and incompetence that could only lie at the door of the Government". Fine Gael leader Enda Kenny said earlier that after nine years "we still do not know how many people work in the health service, how much they are paid or how money is spent".

He asked when the Tánaiste became aware of the "practice of the HSE using capital funding for current purposes" and claimed the Department of Finance "was well aware that capital monies were being used for current expenditure", but Ms Harney said that was not true.

Labour leader Pat Rabbitte said the error "would not be made by a first-year accountancy student". Green Party spokesman John Gormley claimed the Tánaiste was "getting her figures so badly wrong that we are talking about discussing gross incompetence and bungling on an unprecedented scale".

Sinn Féin's Dáil leader Caoimhghín Ó Caoláin said the issue was a further example of the "shambolic approach of those entrusted to oversee and ensure oversight of healthcare delivery".

Rejecting the criticism, Ms Harney reiterated that no money had been misspent or misappropriated. She said the issue had to be put in context and pointed out that at the start of 2005 when the former health boards announced an overspend of €200 million for the previous year, there wasn't a word about it in the Dáil.