HSE paid medical products company €720,000 twice for the same invoice
The HSE said it was 'engaged with the liquidator to recover and resolve this overpayment, among other matters'. So far the overpayment has not been recouped.
The HSE said that, at the time of the liquidation, the company had maintained it was owed additional money by the health service but this was not paid 'pending the resolution of the double payment issue and other matters'.
The HSE identified the company that received the two payments as PMD Device Solutions Ltd.
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In February, PMD Device Solutions Ltd petitioned the High Court for the appointment of provisional liquidators, acknowledging it was 'clearly insolvent', with more than €14.6 million in liabilities set against €4.6 million in assets.
The company claimed it was owed approximately €1.2 million by the HSE and had issued High Court proceedings against the health authority. This is being contested.
The liquidator did not respond to a request for comment.
The Irish Times reported on Friday that the HSE financial report for 2024 showed one company had been paid more than €720,000 from two different parts of the health service on foot of the same invoice. No cross-checking had been carried out.
'The payments were made from two legacy areas [that] were previously on separate ledgers managed by different HSE staff,' it said, adding that the HSE now has an integrated financial and procurement system.
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Provisional liquidators appointed to Cork medical supplies company
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PMD Device Solutions was established in Co Cork in October 2011. It developed medical products for respiratory monitoring.
In early 2024 the then minister of state at the Department of Finance, Jennifer Carroll MacNeill, now Minister for Health, attended a ceremony to ring the bell at the Nasdaq Stockholm exchange in Sweden to mark an acquisition involving the company.
The HSE annual report, published last Friday, says the supplier paid twice had entered into an arrangement with the health service in 2020 for the supply of diagnostic devices, ancillary supplies and information technology. It says the overall system 'was considered to be of significant value in monitoring the condition of Covid-19 patients in hospital settings'.
The supplier received about €15 million between 2020 and 2024.
It says the arrangement was initially put in place on an emergency basis during the pandemic and was never then regularised through an appropriate competitive tendering process.
The report says different HSE units were invoiced from time to time.
'This included prepayment each quarter from mid-2022 to mid-2024 for supply of a standard number of devices, to be drawn down as required by individual hospitals.'
The report says the HSE did not maintain central records of the total number of units paid for, and the number of devices received by hospitals, or paid for and remaining undrawn from the supplier, is not known.
'The executive also does not know how many of the items paid for were actually used in its hospitals.'
Separately, the HSE this week provided more details on the write-off of what its financial accounts described as an 'asset' constructed in 2009 at a cost of €1.4 million. It was never used for its intended purposes and was written off last year at a cost of €800,000, according to the accounts.
The HSE said the write-off related to a planned initiative to develop a hydrotherapy pool.
'A number of factors arising meant that it could not come to fruition and the space was given over to the further capital development of essential clinical capacity. This capital development has delivered six additional outpatient consulting rooms, expanded clinical storage, and hot desk facilities for clinical staff,' the HSE said.
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