Donnelly defends HSE over ventilator procurement after only 465 of 2,200 pre-paid machines delivered

Minister for Health Stephen Donnelly has defended the Health Service Executive (HSE) after internal auditors found only 465 of 2,200 pre-paid ventilators were delivered.

The health service pre-paid €81 million to 10 suppliers previously unknown to the HSE for nearly 2,200 ventilators at the start of the Covid-19 pandemic.

Only 465 of these were delivered, and none were put into clinical use, health service internal auditors have found.

A HSE internal audit report, released on Tuesday, said more than €35 million in refunds was still outstanding and legal action against four suppliers was ongoing.

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Mr Donnelly said he welcomed the audit, but he told RTÉ radio it was important to remember the context in which the deal was done, at the start of the Covid pandemic.

“We have to remember the context, they were being screamed at by the Opposition, by the Government, by the media, by everyone in the country to get these ventilators in at all costs.”

He added: “The reality is that the HSE had to procure ventilators from all over the world in a war-like situation with countries scrambling to get these ventilators, and what we couldn’t have happen and what was a very real concern was that we would run out of ventilators and that we would have patients with Covid in ICU in the most horrific of situations who couldn’t be ventilated and we were seeing this happen in other countries.

“Should due process have been followed? Of course it should, but I think we have to look at what happened in those times and remember that we were all demanding that at any cost we get those ventilators in to protect people in the country.”

The HSE internal audit said testing had indicated a failure rate of 41 per cent in relation to 100 of the initial 465 ventilators received from China. It said this initial testing, coupled with delays in receiving the equipment, resulted in many of the orders being cancelled from April last year.

“The quantity of ventilators ordered was far in excess of the ventilator requirement identified by the technical expert Medical Devices Criticality Assessment Group. There was a lack of evidence of how the new suppliers had been identified, the basis on which order quantities had been placed with them and by whom authorised, while due diligence was not performed in all instances prior to making prepayments to them.”

The audit said on April 3rd, 2020, in response to a due diligence request from the HSE, a consultancy firm raised concerns in relation to two suppliers, identified as “D” and “F”.

“Supplier F had total revenues in the prior year of only $6.6 million and Supplier D was only set up in June 2019. The HSE committed to purchasing 316 units from these suppliers prior to the receipt of the consultancy firm’s response. On April 7th, 2020, subsequent to the receipt of the email from the consultancy firm, and despite the concerns communicated, the HSE paid a further €8.24 million to Supplier F to complete their order.

“Of the total orders valued at €17.4 million placed with these two suppliers (€925,000 with Supplier D and €16.5million with Supplier F), none of the equipment ordered was delivered. [A TOTAL OF ]€920,000 has been refunded by Supplier D and a refund of €16.5million remains outstanding from Supplier F.”

In a statement on Tuesday night on the audit, the HSE said it was important to note that at that time it was operating “in a volatile and effectively closed market where we had to secure equipment in extremely high demand, in an expedited timeframe and under considerable pressure, in the face of a global pandemic”.