Health boards defend budget surplus

The chief executive of the Mid- Western Health Board, Mr Stíofán de Búrca, yesterday refuted any suggestion that savings made by the board last year were at the expense of patient care.

The Mid-Western Health Board, with the South Eastern Health Board and the Western Health Board, appeared yesterday before an Oireachtas health committee to explain how it came to have a budget surplus at a time of health service cuts.

The boards had underspent their budgets by €13.5 million, €6 million and €16 million, respectively. However, they defended the surpluses, saying they resulted from compliance with Department of Health policy.

The boards told the committee that at the end of 2002, the Department said they would no longer receive supplementary money during the year to cover unforeseen costs such as a flu outbreak or winter vomiting virus. They were to create contingency funds.

As a result of 1996 legislation, the budget balance at the end of any year, positive or negative, had to be carried to the next year.

All three boards had not used up their contingency fund for 2003, they said, as they had received extra money from the Department at the end of the year, even though they were told it would not be forthcoming. They had small 2002 surpluses.

Mr de Búrca said he would not apologise for a surplus. "If I had made the decision to max the budget to the limit, and hope the Department would bail us out, I'd probably be in here explaining that." The boards could not spend the extra money on staff because of the cap on public jobs, they said, and they had received no Department guidelines on appropriate contingency funding.