HSE managers spent €130,000 on expenses

[Posted: Sun 01/11/2009]

The HSE has decided to start publishing a quarterly record of credit card usage for expenses incurred by its senior management team, and has said it has recently implemented controls on staff credit card expenditure.

The first set of figures, just published on the HSE website (www.hse.ie) shows that €17,121 has been charged to corporate credit cards held by nine senior managers in the executive to date in 2009.

The HSE says costs charged to credit cards related mainly to hotels, travel and parking costs.

The HSE has revealed that its senior management has spent just over €130,000 on its staff credit cards since the beginning of 2006.

In a statement, it said following a tightening of controls and the establishment of a business travel unit, expenses  were reduced by 51% in 2008.

The HSE said since 2007, following the establishment of this unit, costs of flights and hotels for overseas travel are no longer charged to individual credit cards. This unit, it said, took over the booking of flights and hotels for overseas trips.

The HSE has so far not given a further breakdown of the expenses costs since 2006, including what was spent on  overseas trips.

Published minutes of the September 2009 HSE board meeting show that HSE CEO Prof Brendan Drumm recently visited the Inek Institute in Germany "to develop a resource allocation model within the HSE."

The figures released by the HSE show that Prof Drumm's individual credit card expenditure for the first six months of this year came to €1,050. The highest expenditure in the first six months of this year was by Brian Gilroy, director of commercial and support services, who spent €2,309 on his staff credit card.