THE HSE has paid interest of almost €1.7 million on suppliers’ bills that were not settled on time, it was revealed yesterday.
In a response to a Dáil question from Waterford TD John Deasy (FG), the HSE revealed that it had paid €1.69 million in interest payments between 2005 and 2007.
Under “prompt payment” law, Government bodies must compensate suppliers if they do not pay their bills on time.
Mr Deasy said the figures showed “a basic level of financial mismanagement that made cutbacks to front-line services all the more difficult to swallow”.
The interest payments are itemised to individual HSE areas. The HSE northwest paid the most interest: €488,820 over the three years. “What we’re talking about is basic financial mismanagement. No private company would tolerate this kind of waste and yet the Government prefers to cut frontline services rather than force the HSE to do business efficiently.”
The HSE said the fines were small when compared to the amount of money the health service spends, and it was working to fix the problem. The HSE processes more than a million invoices a year, the executive said in a statement, and to achieve lower prices the standard 45-day payment term was sometimes reduced to as rigid a period as seven days.
“While these deadlines are normally achieved, they are challenging for creditor management,” the HSE said. “The HSE is engaged in a continuous improvement programme where the eventual target is the elimination of prompt payment interest.”