HSE failed to spend €46m of funding

The Health Service Executive (HSE) has failed to spend over €46 million in funding allocated by the Government on new developments and facilities in the first five months of this year.

Official returns made by the HSE to the Department of Health show that it did not spend 25 per cent of the capital funding made available to it by the Government in the period to the end of May.

However, a spokesman for the HSE said that it was confident that all monies would spent by year's end.

The spokesman said that HSE spending on new units and facilities was running at around €50 million per month.

He said that capital expenditure by the HSE was running at a level which was around 30 per cent higher than for the same period last year.

The underspend record in the months to May represents about 25 per cent of the total of more than €183 million allocated for capital expenditure over the period.

The HSE told the Department of Health last month that capital expenditure was behind the official spending profile "due to delays on a number of acute hospital and community care projects".

Minister for Health Mary Harney told the Dáil earlier this month that capital spending by the HSE was behind schedule but that current expenditure "is running ahead of budgeted spend".

The official returns show that the HSE had €183.339 million to spend on capital projects under its expenditure profile for the first five months of the year. However, the executive's actual expenditure over the period was €137.048 million.

The HSE was at the centre of major controversy last month after it emerged that it failed to spend €97.7 million last year that had been allocated to it by the Government for new developments and facilities.

The bulk of this money had to be handed back to the exchequer, as under Department of Finance rules, only 10 per cent of the unspent funding could be carried forward to this year.

The chairman of the board of the HSE, Liam Downey, told The Irish Timesat the time that there had been a history of underspending capital budgets in the health services.

"It's something that we really want to address, not to spend just for the sake of spending but it is important that we spend the money on the identified infrastructure projects quickly. It's been a criticism, as you know, of public service generally, that delivering projects is a very slow process," he said.

Mr Downey said the HSE had set up an estates directorate last year in recognition of this to manage and control the capital budget to make sure that it spent prudently the monies that were allocated on the projects that were critical.

"That underspend is something we need to address to make sure that we implement projects quickly, effectively and spend the money that we're allocated," he said.

Under a five-year programme agreed with the Department of Finance, more than €500 million annually has been allocated for the development of capital facilities in the health service.