Department of Health has made no changes to cut its yearly administrative charges of €381m

Dealing with the Department of Health costs Irish business at least €381 million a year in fees and other costs, according to a new report. The department has failed to reduce the administrative burden it imposes on business and has not yet made changes to reduce this burden, it admits in the report.

This is in spite of a Government and EU target to reduce the burden by 25 per cent in the four years up to 2012.

Most of the total burden arises from hygiene requirements imposed on food businesses. A total of €301 million was raised from almost 44,000 businesses in the sector last year.

Administration time
The department said the reason for the high burden was because a large number of businesses must comply with the system, administration takes up a large amount of time and the activities need to be executed multiple times daily.

The next largest burden related to traceability requirements in the food sector, which accounted for €74 million of the total. Much of this arose because of the need to keep documentary evidence of compliance of traceability.

The department has decided to exclude these two categories from a simplification programme currently under development. It argues that the burden arises from EU regulations and is not added to by the statutory instruments which give force to them. The remaining seven areas in which businesses have to provide information to the department will be included in the programme, but account for only €6 million a year.

The largest remaining burden is the €3.5 million imposed on pharmacists in relation to the keeping of records for controlled substances. The size of this is explained by the fact that pharmacists have to update records several times a day.

The department says the administrative burden on private nursing home owners should reduce with time.

Providers have suggested the use of online forms and electronic documentation but the Health Information and Quality Authority says its IT systems are not yet capable of this.

Administrative burden
In 2007, the European Commission set a 25 per cent target to reduce administrative burden for businesses arising from European legislation by 2012. The Government adopted the same target a year later.

The current report was commissioned to determine the baseline level of burden against which savings could be measured.