Oireachtas Joint and Select Committees

Thursday, 1 February 2024

Public Accounts Committee

Appropriation Accounts 2022
Vote 38 - Health
Report on the Accounts of the Public Services 2022
Chapter 18 - Health Service Executive Funding and Financial Reporting

9:30 am

Mr. Stephen Mulvany:

Like a lot of transformation programmes - and it is a major transformation programme - there were problems initially. Performance can dip, and we have gone through a lot of that. Now, the services are seeing, certainly regarding some of the basics, such as making payments to suppliers, that we are now able to make payments to many suppliers more quickly. Gradually, as we turn on the reporting capacity, we will have much better visibility of our non-pay spend, including to suppliers at what we call material code level, for better planning. Over time, as we roll out the rest of it, we will be able to see why our costs are moving on the non-pay side, such as whether it is because we are buying and using more consumables or whether it is the price of those consumables. When we link up with the HR system - that is under way - the ultimate aim is to get to the stage where we can plan budgets at an individual position code level and know specifically why we are using more hours.