HSE: We want our €9m back
Defective sanitiser was used in schools nationwide
THE HSE will be pursuing the healthcare company that sold them millions of euro worth of defective hand sanitiser that has already been used in schools across the country.
ViraPro sold €9.1million worth of hand sanitiser that contained methanol instead of ethanol. The product was found to cause migraines and skin problems.
The product was then recalled and, as a result, some schools were forced to close last Friday to remove the hand sanitisers.
The HSE said they were ‘actively engaged’ with the company and were ‘pursuing the appropriate remedies’ to the situation.
It said: ‘The total volume ordered was 3,771,560 units of ViraPro with a value of €7.447million (excluding VAT). 3,128,876 units have been received by HSE to date. 2,092,398 units have been placed in quarantine which means that 1,036,074 units have been issued to health service locations.
‘This represents less than 10% of HSE stock and there is ample
‘What action is being taken?
stock available in HSE storage to replace it.’
Due to the ‘extreme urgency’ in which Personal Protection Equipment – including hand sanitiser – was needed at the start of the pandemic, the HSE did not use normal tendering processes which can prevent the purchase of faulty goods with taxpayers’ money.
It said: ‘In order to act with the pace necessary to meet these challenges, due to the extreme urgency arising from the pandemic, it was necessary for the HSE to enter into agreements with a wide variety of suppliers for the purposes of placing urgent purchase orders for PPE without a formal tender process employing the exemptions available under Article 32 (2) (c) of Regulation 2014/24/EU.’
The HSE bought the hand sanitiser last April when there was a global scramble for PPE.
A HSE source told the Irish Daily Mail that the Health Service Executive would be looking to get a refund. The source said: ‘ They are trying to get things sorted. I don’t know if it is legal action but they will be l ooking to get the money back.’ The HSE denied that it has had reports of ill effects of the PPE, but did confirm there were 146 requests for replacements to the faulty hand gel. A HSE spokeswoman s ai d: ‘The HSE Product Recall Team received 146 requests f or replacement hand sanitiser since the Product Recall Notice was issued on Friday October 20, 2020. All 146 requests were delivered on and all f urther requests will be dealt with as these are received.
‘Sufficient stocks are available to deal with replacement requests.
‘The HSE product recall team has not been notified about any ill-effects from using the product.’
Fine Gael Senator and barrister Barry Ward told the Irish Daily Mail t hat t here was almost certainly some legal mechanism by which the HSE could attempt to recuperate the monies.
He said: ‘In any event, if I buy something from a company and it is not of merchantable quality, usually that is the company’s problem, not mine. If the product doesn’t do what it is supposed to do, that is the problem of the person who supplied it.’
He added: ‘ Of course that depends on who supplied i t, whether that company is solvent, and is that company in Ireland.
‘If the hand sanitiser is faulty and it doesn’t do what the purchaser bought it to do, where that was an understood term of the contract, there is some recourse there.’
Sinn Féin’s health spokesman David Cullinane told the Irish Daily Mail that he plans to request that the HSE give a full report on the matter to the Health Committee when they meet tomorrow.
‘The first thing is we have to establish the facts. The Health Committee is meeting to have a special sitting on test and trace and I intend to raise it first thing at that meeting where I will request that the Health Committee gets a full report from the HSE in terms of the tendering that was used,’ he said. ‘It would seem that there wasn’t a tendering process used due to the urgency of acquiring products but we need to establish all the facts.’
Meanwhile, former Fine Gael minister Alan Shatter voiced his concerns over the waste in public funds and asked what the HSE was going to do to recoup them.
On Twitter, he wrote: ‘The question now is what immediate legal action is being taken by HSE to recover from ViraPro the €9.1million spent on a defective and dangerous product and to ensure the €9.1million of public monies paid for it is not dissipated and is recoverable from the company.’