Mr. Seamus McCarthy:

I thank the Chair. The accounts and statements that are with the committee this week are the Health Service Executive financial statements for 2021. There was a turnover of €21.6 billion on those accounts. I gave it a clear audit opinion but I drew attention to a number of matters. I will briefly refer to those. The HSE incurred losses in 2021 totalling €109 million and this was related to the procurement of personal protective equipment, PPE. There were two elements to that. First, the value of PPE stock held at the year end was impaired at a cost of €71 million due to falling market prices for the PPE. At the end of the year, the HSE was required effectively to write off €71 million of what had been spent during the year. The second element is that the HSE wrote off excess stocks of hand gel and some items of PPE at a cost of €38 million. This was material bought either in 2020 or 2021 in the context of Covid-19 but which was estimated at the year end that it would not be used before it reached its expiry date. Therefore, the HSE has taken the hit by writing off those excess stocks in 2021.

Another much smaller item are the costs incurred in 2021 of an estimated €1.25 million in storing a large quantity of protective suits which were written off at a cost of €64 million at the end of 2020. The HSE has not disposed of the protective suits and it is costing a significant amount to keep that material in storage.

As in previous years, in the statement on internal control the HSE acknowledges it has ongoing significant non-compliant procurement of goods and services and there is a good bit of detail in relation to that in the financial statements in the SIC.

Finally, the HSE outlines the actions taken following the cyberattack in May 2021 and how it is addressing recommendations to prevent similar attacks in the future. As members will remember, this resulted in significant impacts on the service the HSE was able to provide during the year and there were significant costs associated with it as well. Those are the items I drew attention to.