Serious security and operational concerns have been raised about a €130 million computer system for the health services, which saw an employee being paid €1 million in error.
Yesterday the Health Services Executive (HSE) defended the system which will eventually control payroll and other staff and personnel records of more than 136,000 staff in the HSE. The project, it said, was "working well and will be extended to all staff" over the coming months.
However, The Irish Times has seen an internal review from last year which raises serious concerns about various aspects of the project.
Fine Gael health spokesman Liam Twomey also said last night that the HSE had failed to address the fundamental concerns about the system.
He called on the HSE to outline the details of the contract for the system, and its total potential cost, amid concerns about the potential escalation in the costs of the project.
Yesterday the HSE said the total cost would be about €130 million.
The project is also the subject of an investigation by the Comptroller and Auditor General, while Minister for Health Mary Harney has also asked for a full report on the system.
In a statement yesterday, the HSE blamed the €1 million overpayment on a human error. "The cause of the overpayment was due to a combination of human error and procedural gaps. Measures were put in place to ensure no repeat of the error." The overpayment was identified by the employee as opposed to the computer system, although the HSE has claimed said that the problem would have been picked up at future procedural checks.
However, The Irish Times has seen an internal review of the project dated last September which raised a series of concerns about the project at that time.
The €1 million overpayment issue was highlighted in the report among a series of other problems.
The review states that there were "fundamental errors" in the decisions and warns that the system "cannot be changed without a major re-fit of the whole design and configuration of the system". It highlights that the "stakeholders", or hospitals and then health boards, had "no real buy-in into the project".
It also said that the security of the system "must be reviewed as a matter of urgency" after it was found that confidential information could be sent to people who should not have access to it.
Yesterday FG's Liam Twomey said that "apart from acknowledging that an overpayment was made and was missed, the HSE had addressed "none of the issues highlighted by Fine Gael". "The HSE's statement has not dealt with issues surrounding costs of the project, fundamental errors which prevent the system being enhanced in the future, or the fact that certain stakeholders have not bought into the system."
