A Health Service Executive employee earned close to €1 million last year, while another received a termination payment of €1.6 million, the State’s financial watchdog has revealed.
A report from the Comptroller and Auditor General, published as part of the HSE’s annual report for last year, also shows that about 40 per cent of the nearly €450 million spent by the State on Covid-19 vaccines since they became available during the pandemic has now been written off as they had become obsolete.
The comptroller’s report reveals that one person working for the HSE earned between €960,000 and €970,000 last year, about €700,000 of which was paid for treating patients outside the employee’s normal hours. They had a contract which allowed for premium payments to be made in respect of each patient seen during a rest-period call-out.
During one weekend call-out last year, “the employee was paid at a rate of six hours’ pay per patient, for each of four patients treated within a single period of 60 minutes, ie in excess of €2,800 for the call-out”.
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Overall, the report shows 10 HSE employees earned more than €500,000 last year.
HSE chief executive Bernard Gloster said on Friday that “while some levels of high earning are unavoidable, it is clear that in some cases this has reached unacceptable levels which cannot continue into the future”.
The €1.6 million termination payment made to a former HSE employee last year included a sum of €1.37 million for potential loss of private earnings during a period of three years and eight months during which they had been on suspension. “The employee was in receipt of full salary while on suspension,” the report says, adding that the overall package also included an ex-gratia sum of €200,000 and €30,000 in respect of reputational damage.
A total of €86.5 million was written off in respect of Covid-19 vaccines that had reached their expiry date (€64.5 million) or were expected to reach their expiry date before use (€22 million). During 2022, €94.4 million had been written off in respect of vaccines that were not used.
“The total expenditure on purchases of Covid-19 vaccines up to 31 December 2023 was €449 million. The obsolescence write-offs to that date – amounting to a total of €181 million – represent 40 per cent of the total spent.”
The report also says at end of last year the HSE held stocks of antigen tests that cost €12.5 million which were expected to reach the manufacturer’s expiry date before they could be used. The executive also incurred costs of €2.3 million in respect of the storage of personal protective equipment (PPE) that it had classified as obsolete.
“This comprised around €1.3 million for storage of large quantities of hand gel, €500,000 for storage of protective suits and €500,000 for assorted other items of PPE. The cumulative storage costs for these obsolete items over the past three years is around €5.25 million.”
The report also revealed the HSE is to pay €30 million over a four-year period as part of a settlement of a dispute with a private health insurer in respect of a claim from the insurer relating to the application of private patient treatment charges. It says the HSE has agreed to pay four equal annual instalments of €7.5 million from 2024 to 2027.
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