HSE payroll errors persist despite reforms

For the past decade, the Medical Independent (MI) has repeatedly highlighted salary errors made by the HSE. Ten years ago, we published a story that revealed the Executive spent over €1.6 million in salary overpayments in 2014.

At the time, a HSE spokesperson said overpayments can occur for a variety of reasons. These included: Late notifications of staff work pattern changes; payments issued after sick leave pay was exhausted; delayed resignation notices; and payroll administration errors.

The lack of a single integrated financial management system (IFMS) to coordinate and streamline payment processes was a major contributory factor, according to the HSE.

Despite the lack of an IFMS, the HSE made attempts to address the matter. First, a subgroup was set up to monitor salary errors on an ongoing basis. Any problems identified as potentially systemic were to be communicated to relevant managers to assist in ensuring that such scenarios did not recur. Later, a payroll compliance unit was established under the governance of the national human resources department. A ‘SAP HR/time/payroll’ solution was also rolled out, which the HSE said would help reduce salary errors.

However, as news stories in MI repeatedly demonstrated over the years, overpayments not only continued, but escalated. We revealed that the amount spent on salary errors was approximately €2 million in 2017; €2.2 million in 2018; €3.4 million in 2019; €5 million in 2020; €5.6 million in 2021; and €7.86 million in 2022.

In 2023, the HSE finally began the phased implementation of the long-delayed IFMS it had procured.

However, problems paying suppliers through the new systems occurred soon after roll-out. In December 2023, the HSE’s Chief Financial Officer, Mr Stephen Mulvany, told the audit and risk committee that a technical problem arose where two large payment files relating to the HSE and Tusla were inadvertently paid twice.

These and other issues caused the timeline for national implementation of the IFMS to be pushed out. The latest ‘go-live’ took place at the beginning of this month, with the next due to take place in July.

Recently, national media have reported findings from an internal HSE audit, which revealed that payroll overpayments approximately totalled €14.6 million at the end of 2023.

The audit also stated that the HSE had written off over €909,500 in overpayments for 2022 and 2023.

In addition, figures recently supplied to MI show that the HSE spent €11.2 million in overpayments in 2024. While this is a reduction from 2023, the amount remains significant. A HSE spokesperson noted that the introduction of a national payroll overpayments register allowed for the recovery of €9.5 million last year. They also stated that the SAP HR/time/payroll solution is now in place in seven out of eight payroll areas.

Despite years of attempted reforms, payroll errors in the HSE remain a costly and persistent issue. While most of the money is recovered, the scale of overpayments highlights ongoing inefficiencies. The IFMS may help, but as its protracted roll-out continues, it remains to be seen whether it can finally bring this expensive problem under control.