A figure of €14.2m was paid out in one year to such companies, when the cases could have been treated under the public system, the leader of Aontú, Peadar Tóibín, alleged. The Meath West TD said it was a “major conflict of interest.”
University Hospital Limerick (UHL) “was found not to have conducted an open procurement process with such transfers, he said.
Today’s News in 90 seconds – 7th May 2025
In one case, a consultant created a private firm to read scans and “used the hospital public waiting lists to then funnel work through rostering into his own private company,” he alleged under Dáil privilege.
He added: “It is an incredible situation and a major conflict of interest for anybody in a public role to be doing this in relation to their own businesses.
“The Minister must admit that we cannot allow anybody on the public payroll to be in a position where they are creating a private company and funnelling public work to their own private company.”
“We are actually hearing of this happening in real time at the moment. Hospitals have work coming at them at a fierce rate,” he said.
Health Minister Jennifer Carroll MacNeill accepted “a major breakdown in terms of compliance and value for money,” Mr Tóibín said, referring to a reply to a Parliamentary Question he had received from Minister MacNeill.
She confirmed a probe is under way by the Office of the Chief Internal Auditor to establish the extent to which private companies were used to provide additional services.
Two private entities were owned or part-owned by employees of University Hospital Limerick, and a third was owned by an HSE employee at another hospital, Mr Tóibín alleged in the Dáil.
“There are delayed diagnoses, delayed treatments, and more negative outcomes as a result of this,” he said. There are not enough public beds within the system, he noted, while investment was clearly not getting to the front line.
He demanded an end to the recruitment embargo effectively in place in the healthcare sector, in order to improve throughput in a situation where one hospital had a backlog of 960 biopsies.
Minister for Public Expenditure, Jack Chambers, said the HSE has initiated a detailed survey of all “insourcing” activity within the HSE.
This practice had been paused by CEO Bernard Gloster, “where existing staff are hired, engaged or paid by separate entities” for work on public hospital cases.
“Only insourcing where the HSE directly engages its own staff through payroll can continue until this survey is completed,” Mr Chambers said.
The review of insourcing across the HSE was also due to broader concerns about how it is operating, and value for money considerations, he said.
Minister for Public Expenditure, Jack Chambers, said the matters raised were “extremely serious” and needed to be “properly and thoroughly followed through” by the HSE.
Under initiatives to reduce waiting lists, the HSE can outsource to private hospitals under the surgical services framework and the private provider framework, he noted.
#Probe #Dáil #told #consultants #creating #private #companies #funnel #public #patients
