Deputy Paul Lawless Branded the findings presented to the Public Accounts Committee (PAC) on the National Treatment Purchase Fund (NTPF) as a “scandalous exposé of financial misuse and governance collapse”
Deputy Lawless highlighted the severe conflict of interest issue, where public hospital consultants established and outsourced work to their own private clinics, essentially referring public patients to themselves in private settings. This practice, first exposed by Aontú, allows consultants to use public waiting lists to funnel work through their own Private Clinic.
“It is very worrying that the system is potentially rewarding low output. The idea that a consultant and a hospital may be essentially transferring public patients onto their private list and there is so little governance and oversight in relation to it. That is majorly worrying. The Public Accounts Committee (PAC) heard today that there is potentially a conflict of interest. We know that the vast majority of consultants are working in both the private and public system, so I think it is really important that the minister really gets a handle on this.”
“A number of other very concerning issues were also exposed to PAC,including allegations of consultants in Naas General potentially being paid twice for the procedure carried out during core hours. It was also revealed that an IT Payroll system implemented in Beaumont Hospital with an approved budget of €1.9m ended up costing €4.8m. Astonishingly, derogation was received to not put this out to tender resulting in a €3m overspend. It found that “Procurement team was not consulted and project was given directly to an unnamed contractor”
“Incredibly The NTPF was also unable to confirm whether related party checks existed to identify if consultants were directly benefiting from insourcing contracts. When questioned further on this It emerged that only 75% of consultants had complied with SIPO obligations. It is outrageous to think that 25% of consultants have failed to comply with SIPO Requirements and that no party enforced or followed up on this.”
Deputy Lawless concluded “ The NTPF cannot be used essentially to incentivise a low output from consultants. What I want from the minister and what I will be raising questions about is to do an analysis on the output of a consultant in terms of public core hours and an analysis in relation to their private hours.”
