Oireachtas Joint and Select Committees

Thursday, 6 October 2022

Public Accounts Committee

2021 Report of the Comptroller and Auditor General and Appropriation Accounts
Vote 38 - Health
Health Service Executive - Financial Statements 2021 (Resumed)

9:30 am

Mr. Stephen Mulvany:

There is no doubt that it is a huge sum of money. Again, going back to conditions that were in place at the time, about which we do not need to remind people, all of those decisions were made largely in March or April on all the orders. On the technical piece of it, the vast bulk of that €483 million over two years, which was the €109 and €374 impairment charges, the vast bulk of that was a price impairment. There is a level that was obsolescence and there is a level that was storage, but the vast bulk of it is price. This means that we had a choice. Back in March and April 2020, we could have said "We will buy less now in the hope that we will be able to buy more later, on which there was no certainty, or that we will get it at a better price". We were just not prepared to do that arbitrage or that gambling.

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