Mr. David Sweeney:

In 2019, the hospital identified the need for an integrated HR and payroll system and approached the HSE with a view to rolling out the national system as soon as possible. Unfortunately, at that time the HSE project team were otherwise occupied with the roll-out of the system to the statutory hospitals and while they were positively disposed to rolling it out in Beaumont hospital, they did not have the capacity to do so at that time. During the height of the Covid-19 pandemic, we came to the increased realisation that the system we had was at end of life. The system provider was a UK-based company that had indicated it would no longer support and develop the system we had. We felt at that time as the senior management team, and taking into consideration the impact of recruitment and payroll-related activities for a hospital that undertakes hundreds of thousands of transactions through its payroll system each year, that the circumstances at that time warranted a derogation.