Payroll system to cost €21m more this year, Dáil told
The stalled P-Pars payroll system will use up €21m in taxpayers’ money this year, the Dáil heard today.
Last year Fine Gael exposed deficiencies in the multi-million euro IT system which was set up to handle the wages of more than 100,000 health service employees.
Opposition leader Enda Kenny today cited an unpublished consultants’ report which found the project was unstable and poorly implemented. He said the wasted money could have cut bought vital hospital equipment, cut suicide rates or funded home help for the elderly.
He said to the Taoiseach: “You promised to stop the rot, to stop the waste. Only you didn’t do that. Your Government didn’t do that.”
He quoted the Astron Consulting report which found that the P-Pars project was badly conceived, poorly implemented, unstable and still incurring high costs.
Mr Ahern insisted that the further roll-out of P-Pars was on hold and that the Health Service Executive (HSE) wasn’t established when P-Pars first went live and needed an adjustment period.
Further checks will take place over the next 8-9 months led by the HSE’s national director of shared services.
He said additional costs of €2.8m was sought by the HSE in 2006 but this hasn’t been sanctioned yet by the Health Department.
Up to €15m of the €21m cost of P-Pars for 2006 went on staff wages for the HSE, he explained.
Mr Kenny told the Dáil that just over €4m of the money could buy an Intensive Care Unit and CAT scanner for Temple Street Children’s Hospital.
The remaining €17m spent on P-Pars could have helped fund the National Suicide Prevention office, hired another 100 public health nurses to assist elderly people to live at home or provided 650,000 extra home help hours.
“They could have done these things, but they didn’t. They allowed the P-Pars waste juggernaut to roll on and eat into valuable resources that could have made a real difference to people who desperately need the type of services listed above.”
Mr Kenny claimed P-Pars will have cost a total of €186m up to the end of next year.
The Astron Consulting report warned that P-Pars may turn into a never-ending project and that in the past year “overall project governance appears to have gone”.
Mr Kenny said during Leaders’ Questions: “Over one year ago we blew the whistle on the disastrous P-Pars project. We were promised immediate action. We were told that the project would be frozen. The taxpayers’ money would be protected. The waste would end. We now find that the project wasn’t frozen, the taxpayers’ money is still being poured down the P-Pars drain. But the waste goes on.
A Fine Gael spokesman said: “There appears to be no limit to this Government’s taste for waste. No-one ever shouts stop when they see taxpayers’ money being wasted. The attitude seems to be a case of ’easy come, easy go’.”
