Consultants Deloitte received nearly €60 million from the Department of Health, the former health boards and Health Service Executive for work on two computer projects for the health sector which were suspended yesterday.
The Irish Times understands that Deloitte received €40 million in consultancy fees over recent years for the PPARs payroll and staff records system and a separate €18.12 million for work on the FISP financial information system project.
The board of the HSE, as expected, decided yesterday to put on hold plans to expand the PPARs systems beyond the four locations where it is in use.
The long-term value of the PPARs system is now to be re-evaluated in the light of the move towards a central health service structure under the HSE.
The HSE board also decided to suspend the development of the FISP project pending further evaluation.
The HSE said the projected expenditure on the project from its inception in 1995 to the end of this year was €150 million.
In a statement yesterday the HSE said the development of PPARs pre-dated the creation of the current organisation and that the project was designed to provide a common payroll and human resource system for the former 11 health boards.
"It was not designed as a single system to serve the HSE's national structure," it stated.
The HSE's national director of shared services, Laverne McGuinness, said the PPARs system "was designed to make sure that each health board had a common human resource management system yet could continue to operate independently".
The HSE said the FISP system was at a much earlier stage of development than PPARs. The new evaluation was to ensure the system was adequate for its future needs.
Meanwhile it emerged last night that three weeks ago the Department of Finance expressed strong concern to the Department of Health about the FISP project and called for it to be reviewed.
"While agreeing with the critical importance of a central financial management system for the health services, we have very serious concerns about the approach being adopted to its development. This project shares the PPARs approach to development which is over-dependent on very expensive external consultants.
"From figures presented [ at a meeting] it would seem that over €30 million will have been expended on consultancy assistance by the end of 2005, and despite this level of expenditure no element of the system has yet been rolled out," the Department of Finance wrote to the Secretary General of the Department of Health, Michael Scanlan.
A spokesman for the Department of Health said Mr Scanlan was awaiting a report from the HSE on the computer projects. He said there had been a range of correspondence between the parties on the issues.
Meanwhile, chairman of the Dáil Public Accounts Committee Michael Noonan said last night that it would hold a hearing on the findings of a report by the Comptroller and Auditor General on the projects which is likely to be completed in December.
