Oireachtas Joint and Select Committees

Thursday, 7 July 2016

Public Accounts Committee

Work Programme

9:00 am

Mr. Seamus McCarthy:

Yes, it was a provision because there is late payment in the HSE. When we completed the 2014 accounts, we identified that a change in the law in 2013 required it to pay the compensation without application by the suppliers. We reported on that because the sums were quite large. In 2014, a provision, a charge, was included on the income and expenditure account of €9 million in respect of payments the organisation recognised it would be obliged to pay. Subsequently it revised advice that it is not obliged to pay automatically but that it would be liable to pay it if an application were made by a supplier that received payment late. What it has now in the 2015 accounts is a contingent liability. I think the figure for contingent liability is approximately €16 million, and it has a smaller provision, of perhaps €1.5 million to €2 million, charged in the account in the expectation that that is the amount it will pay.