Oireachtas Joint and Select Committees

Thursday, 11 May 2023

Public Accounts Committee

Appropriation Accounts 2021
Financial Statements 2021: HSE
Special Report No. 114 of the Comptroller and Auditor General: Emergency Procurement of Ventilators by the HSE
Vote 38 - Health

9:30 am

Mr. Stephen Mulvany:

We had a finite number of staff in the traditional notion of how we did ventilation, but we were faced with scenes from Italy where anaesthetists were telling us how they made decisions as to who they could and could not ventilate because they did not have enough ventilators. There are different ways to ventilate people. Ultimately, it became clear that our surge capacity was approximately 328 and an extended surge capacity was a number somewhere in the 500s, but that was not clear until after we had made these orders. As soon as it became clear, we were cancelling orders. As I said, we took the risk on the procurement and financial side to avoid a potential risk on the patient side.

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