HIQA incurred non-compliant procurement costs of €124,000 for legal services in 2024, according to minutes from its February board meeting.
HIQA CEO Ms Angela Fitzgerald advised the meeting that the increased legal costs arose “due to significant new and diverse work functions” taken on by the Authority during the year and also “increased regulatory challenges”.
A spokesperson for HIQA told the Medical Independent legal services were procured from a legal firm with specialist expertise in the areas of cybersecurity relevant to the health sector.
The spokesperson said the requirement for this specialist expertise was to support HIQA taking on a new statutory function. The procurement was undertaken through standard Office of Government Procurement (OGP) processes.
“The scope of the work was wider and significantly more complex than originally planned resulting in expenditure above the threshold for the appropriate process,” according to the spokesperson.
The spokesperson said “as the work is ongoing, it required a new procurement process”.
Also, in September 2024, the contract with HIQA’s primary legal provider expired.
“Therefore, we had to procure new services through the standard external competitive process to address all of HIQAs requirements, including this specialist area.”
The competitive process was managed by the OGP and two firms were selected. One of these firms has the “necessary specialist expertise in this area”, according to the spokesperson.
The February meeting heard that contracts had been awarded “in recognition of HIQA’s rapidly expanding and increasingly diverse remit”.
Also at the meeting, Acting Chief Operations Officer Mr Sean Angland presented the 2024 annual accounts, which recorded a surplus of €657,655 for the year.
Leave a Reply
You must be logged in to post a comment.