Health Minister to vet use of consultants
Health Minister Mary Harney tonight vowed to personally vet the use of consultants in her department.
The controversial P-PARS payroll system for the health service has cost €116m, including up to €70m on exteral consultants, but has now been suspended.
Speaking after a party meeting in Limerick, Ms Harney said the employment of any consulting firms in the future would have to be personally sanctioned by her.
“Consultants have to be the exception and not the norm and I think in recent times we’ve seen an excessive dependence on consultants,” she said.
Ms Harney said the Health Service Executive (HSE) was a large unified organisation, which should have its own expertise.
The P-PARS system was in use in four HSE locations – St James’s Hospital and three former health board areas: North West, Midlands and Mid Western – where it will continue to operate for the foreseeable future.
The system was developed before all the individual health board areas were taken over by the HSE.
The HSE has also confirmed it would be halting its Financial Information Systems Project (FISP), a similar computer system to the payroll technology, pending further evaluation.
However, the health service said the computer project, which has already cost €30m in consultancy fees, was at a much earlier stage of development than P-PARS.
