Management consultants and the HSE

Expensive advice

Sir, – Paul Cullen reports on an estimated HSE spend of €120 million to €180 million on outside consultants. Bernard Gloster, the HSE’s chief executive, acknowledges that this is extraordinary (News, May 25th).

He may be right. But what I think extraordinary is that this is an estimate of expenditure not for 2023 or 2024 but rather for 2022.

We have all learned to our great cost that the HSE cannot budget for future expenditures. But it really is a bit rich that, five months after the end of the year, the best it can do in “estimating” last year’s expenditure in one area is to say that it was more than €120 million and less than €180 million. – Yours, etc,

PAT O’BRIEN,

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Rathmines,

Dublin 6.