The announcement of the private company which has been selected by the Health Service Executive to administer the refund of nursing homes charges has been delayed because the company selected planned to outsource much of the work to India, it has emerged.
The Irish Times has learned that the board of the HSE agreed at its meeting on June 1st that the contract for administering the refunds should be awarded to KPMG.
The company told the HSE it planned to outsource the scanning of nursing home records to India but it appears that under EU tendering procedures, under which the company was selected to administer the refunds, this is not permitted if it can be done in the EU. Efforts are now being made by the company to find a way around the outsourcing issue.
A senior source in the Department of Health confirmed yesterday "an issue has arisen" which was delaying the announcement.
Concerns about the tendering process for the selection of a company to administer the refunds, which are expected to cost about €1 billion, have now been raised by a number of TDs, including Fianna Fáil backbencher Jim Glennon. He put down a parliamentary question, to which he received a reply yesterday that did not allay his concerns, he said.
"It was dated June 20th and it stated that the process was still under way. I had previously been of the impression that the decision was made on the 1st of June subject to a 14-day cooling-off period which brought it up to the 15th of June but yet I have a response today dated the 20th of June to say that the process hasn't been completed yet." Mr Glennon said he would be pursuing it further.
The HSE initially tendered for a company to administer the refunds last summer and 11 expressions of interest were received. It was subsequently claimed a new tendering process was necessary because the prices quoted by those who had tendered were too high.
Fine Gael Senator Fergal Browne told a meeting of the Oireachtas health committee last Thursday there were "suspicions that the process suited one particular company that had not initially applied". The secretary general of the Department of Health, Michael Scanlan, told the committee he "received strong assurances from the HSE that it can fully stand over the tender process".
A HSE spokeswoman said there would be no comment on the tendering process until it formally announced who had been given the contract to administer the refunds. It expects to make an announcement later this week.
Meanwhile, a spokesman for KPMG said no contract had been signed yet. Seán Power, Minister of State for Health with responsibility for older people, said the awarding of the contract was solely a matter for the HSE.