Oireachtas Joint and Select Committees

Thursday, 16 October 2025

Public Accounts Committee

Financial Statements 2024: Health Service Executive

2:00 am

Mr. Stephen Mulvany:

The current weekly usage number is 55,000. These are the surgical masks, the plain masks, referred to as FFP2 masks. When they were bought in 2022 and 2023, the usage number was an awful lot higher than 55,000 per week. We bought masks during the pandemic for all of the public service.

The level of usage has fallen now. In two or three years' time, as the CEO has said, these masks will be obsolete. We are looking to see if there is anything we can do to offload them, but we would not want to raise expectations. That has never proven to be practical.