Government 'not to blame' over €150m pay system

The Tánaiste has dismissed Opposition claims the Government was to blame for the delays and massive cost overruns in the introduction of a new €150 million payroll system for the health service.

The Personnel, Payroll and Related Systems (PPARS) is supposed to control the pay of the health service's 136,000 staff, but it can currently only manage 37,000 staff.

The Health Services Executive (HSE) has decided to suspend the roll-out of the controversial system after serious concerns about its quality and value for money. It emerged last July that PPARS overpaid one employee by €1 million. The HSE blamed the problem on "human error" and insisted the system was functioning properly.

Minister for Health Mary Harney this afternoon blamed the problems on the way the health service was structured in the past.

"The real problem is the fact that in the health service, we have a jumble of incoherence as far as work practices are concerned, we've thousands of pay variations, thousands of rosters, many different grade structures and individual working arrangements," she said.

"We had 11 different health boards: if there was any argument for getting rid of them, and many opposed their abolition, it is that this kind of chaos wouldn't have happened."

The Tánaiste said she had ordered a departmental review of PPARS in addition to the one instigated by new HSE chief Prof Brendan Drumm.

"I have every confidence that if it's appropriate to continue with the system it will continue, but if it's not appropriate, as I said before in July, we have to admit the error of our ways and make sure we get it right," Ms Harney said. "If we got it wrong, let's put our hands up and stop wasting more money."

During leaders questions in the Dáil this evening, the Taoiseach, Bertie Ahern, said €116 million has already been spent on the system up to the end of 2004.

He estimated it would cost an extra €55 million to finish implementing the system.

Earlier, Fine Gael leader Enda Kenny described PPARS as "the Daddy of them all" in terms of Government wastefulness.

"It was estimated in 1998 at €8.8 million and a three-year roll-out," he said. "In 2002 €17 million had been spent and there was an estimate of a further €92 million required, so by this year - 2005 - €150 million of the public's money has been spent on this."

The Comptroller and Auditor General reported in August 2004 that another €68 million would be needed to fully install the system.

"If you want an example of why costs are rising in the health service and why frontline services are going down, why MRSA stalks the corridors in some hospitals, why trolleys pile up in others, why waiting lists continue to increase - this is an example of gross incompetence by this Government," Mr Kenny said.

"It's an example of reckless spending of the people's money and they're out there in their thousands this morning, knowing that €150 million of their money has been spent on a system that doesn't work."

Labour deputy leader and health spokeswoman Liz McManus accused the Government of having a "cavalier attitude" to spending taxpayers' money. She blamed the wastefulness on Mary Harney and her two predecessors at the Department of Health, Micheál Martin and Brian Cowen.

"The scale of the waste involved in this case beggars belief," she said. The money, which she said would build a small hospital, "has been allowed to disappear into a financial black-hole".

Sinn Féin Dáil leader and health spokesman Caoimhghin O'Caolain said the situation highlighted the lack of accountability for the health service at ministerial level.

The Irish Nurses' Organisation welcomed the decision to suspend the rollout of PPARS, which it described as "an unstoppable, out of control project which took precedence over all other issues including patient care".