Audit of HSE to confirm health service is still running over budget
Health chiefs warn there will be a repeat of last year’s funding crisis
A DETAILED audit carried out by the State’s spending watchdog is set to confirm that the health service is still running over budget, despite being given a once-off payment worth almost €1bn at the end of last year.
It comes after the Department of Health admitted it still does not know how much the Health Services Executive (HSE) ran over budget last year.
The HSE this week published its National Service Plan (NSP) for 2024, which confirmed it has been allocated a budget of €23.5bn for this year, an increase of 4.6% on last year’s funding.
Despite this, the State health agency warned it does not have enough money to maintain services this year.
The latest confusion over funding follows last year’s debacle when the NSP for 2023 was only unveiled in March and – as revealed in the Irish Mail on Sunday – hid a predicted €2bn shortfall.
This deficit would ultimately result in an extraordinary pre-budget showdown between Health Minister Stephen Donnelly and Public Expenditure Minister Paschal Donohoe, who refused to sanction his Cabinet colleague’s request for a €2bn increase in health spending.
‘The problem is being kicked down the road’
In the wake of the stand-off, the Department of Health was only allocated an extra €700m of the €2bn it requested. But in November it was granted another €900m-plus, which went towards filling the deficit for last year.
A source familiar with the experience of working on health service plans said the extent of the shortfall would be revealed when the State spending watchdog conducts its audit of health spending later this year.
They told the MoS: ‘The Comptroller and Auditor General will do an audit and these audits are always tough. It will probably be around April or May when it is known how much it cost to run the health service last year.
‘Until then, the problem is being kicked down the road. But the argument between the departments of Health, Public Expenditure and Finance still goes on, because it is impossible to provide the same level of service without the HSE being given more money.’
Health Minister Stephen Donnelly unveiled the 2024 NSP on Wednesday, the day after he presented the plan to his Cabinet colleagues.
In the document, the health authority admits: ‘The
cost of running our existing services at current levels over the next 12 months will exceed the total funding available to the health service in 2024.
‘Therefore, in addition to developing more effective service delivery approaches to enable greater activity to meet rising demand, we will seek other opportunities to minimise the level of financial deficit that will arise.’
In response to queries from the MoS, the HSE ‘welcomed’ the ‘significant investment by the State’ in its budget for 2024 and recent years. But it said the level of funding provided is not enough to ‘overcome’ all of the ‘sustained pressures’ on the health service.
A spokesperson said: ‘Our starting position must be to demonstrate the best use of the significant resources we have and then to work with Government throughout the year to accurately project the position ahead of the summer economic statement and the estimates process that will follow.’
In an interview this week to mark the publication of the NSP 2024, HSE chief executive Bernard Gloster acknowledged: ‘We’re carrying a cost and a cost-base and pressure coming into this year which, if we just carried on, the money wouldn’t meet that.’