HSE pays ex-chair €15m in contracts
Rigney Dolphin boss says role did not give him advantage
THE Health Service Executive has paid almost €15m to a company run by its former chairman, the Irish Mail on Sunday can reveal.
Frank Dolphin served as nonexecutive chairman of the HSE from August 2010 to December 2011. Prior to this, he was the chairman of Temple Street Children’s Hospital. His company, Rigney Dolphin, has received €14,962,928 from the HSE since 2010.
Documents, released under the Freedom of Information Act, show €13,979,948 of this comes from operating the Primary Care Reimbursement Scheme (PCRS) Contact Centre services for the General Medical Services Scheme, a centralised service dealing with medical and GP visit card applications.
The payments for the lucrative contract started the month after Mr Dolphin became chair of the HSE. But the tendering process was done before his appointment. The company has several other contracts with the HSE including the operation of the quit smoking resource – Quit.ie – and the Breastfeeding Support line on behalf of the HSE. When asked by the MoS if he felt his role as chairman gave him an advantage, Mr Dolphin said: ‘Not necessarily, the business we’re in is a call centre. If you look at our figures and performance, we would be very cost competitive.
‘I mean there would have been other things that we would have tendered that we wouldn’t have won and I certainly didn’t win any of the other contracts that came out. To be honest with you, becoming chair of the HSE when I did… it wasn’t the greatest business move in my life because what it drew on me was a lot of media focus. My interest was stated from the beginning and I would say to you that our business didn’t grow. A competitive advantage would be if the business we got kept growing and we won other contracts, and we didn’t win other contracts.’
But the MoS pointed out his company had won two contracts in recent years – for the Quit.ie and Breastfeeding Support Line – for which his firm has been paid €707,741 in the past three years.
‘Both of those two are, as I said to you, they are small... the kind of fees we’re earning are not huge.’
A HSE spokesman said: ‘Rigney Dolphin held two contracts with HSE prior to its chairman becoming non-executive chairman of the HSE... these were disclosed on Dr Dolphin’s appointment. The contracts for the provision of these services were entered into with Rigney Dolphin following open procurement processes.’