There were more than 200 cases of health service staff receiving overpayments in 2023 with a collective value of in excess of €5 million, internal auditors have found.
There were payroll overpayments of about €14.6 million on the books at the end of 2023.
A Health Service Executive internal audit report said of the 211 cases of overpayment of more than €10,000, 136 did not have any repayments recorded in 2023.
Auditors said absence of repayments of overpayments may be due to the individual concerned no longer receiving any payments from the health service.
The report said the HSE was the largest employer in the country with nearly 144,000 staff in October 2023. It said a payroll overpayment arose where incorrect, insufficient or late notification of a change to the contract or circumstances of an employee took place.
“While every effort is made to avoid such occurrences, where it does happen the policy of the HSE is to recover the outstanding amounts as expeditiously as possible.”
However, the audit reveals that while overpayments are recouped in many cases, in others the amounts involved are written off.
Auditors found that in 2023 new overpayments to the value of €12.7 million were uncovered in addition to overpayments worth €10.5 million which were on the books at the start of the year.
However, during 2023 auditors said payroll overpayments to the value of €8.089 million were recouped.
The report said €388,958 in payroll overpayments was written off in 2023.
This left a closing balance of payroll overpayments of €14.696 million at the end of 2023, the report said.
It said the main reasons for payroll overpayments in the period January-August 2023 were master data errors – which accounted for about 15 per cent or a value of €1.08 million.
Late entries relating to unpaid leave for staff as well as errors relating to sick leave and cases where employees were not taken off payroll each had an overpayment value of more than €1 million.
HSE management told auditors that notwithstanding the increase in the volume of overpayments over recent years and current resourcing challenges, staff endeavoured to contact those who received overpayments to ensure timely recovery of funds.
Management said that between 2016 and 2023, nearly €28 million in overpayments was recovered.
The audit report said that at the end of 2023 there were 512 cases of overpayments with a value of €1.185 million dating back four or five years. It said 417 cases were marked as “outstanding” and had no repayments recorded in 2023.
It said of these 56 per cent related to deceased people.
The HSE said it took very seriously, and worked to minimise, overpayments that may arise. It said its overall average annual payroll costs for 2022 and 2023 was €7.5 billion.
“The overpayments identified and outstanding as at the end of 2023 represent less than 0.2 per cent of the annual payroll cost,” it said.
