{"id":490517,"date":"2026-06-09T11:31:14","date_gmt":"2026-06-09T11:31:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/490517\/"},"modified":"2026-06-09T11:31:14","modified_gmt":"2026-06-09T11:31:14","slug":"hospital-employee-flagged-that-e30000-aramark-payment-to-chi-could-be-reviewed-by-watchdog-the-irish-times","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/490517\/","title":{"rendered":"Hospital employee flagged that \u20ac30,000 Aramark payment to CHI could be reviewed by watchdog \u2013 The Irish Times"},"content":{"rendered":"

A staff member at the group that runs paediatric hospitals in Dublin highlighted in 2022 that a controversial \u20ac30,000 payment<\/a> provided by a concession holder for a Christmas party could be reviewed by the spending watchdog, the Comptroller and Auditor General<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The comments are set out in a series of emails attached to a letter sent by Children\u2019s Health Ireland (CHI)<\/a> to the D\u00e1il Public Accounts Committee<\/a>, which had been investigating the background to the payment.<\/p>\n

Committee members on Thursday are expected to consider the letter from CHI chief executive Lucy Nugent in which she again said the group recognised it was \u201cinappropriate\u201d for it to have requested the donation in 2022.<\/p>\n

She said the money had been repaid in full to the concession holder.<\/p>\n

The documents show that on December 6th, 2022, an invoice was sent from CHI to the food and retail company Aramark<\/a> for \u20ac30,000. <\/p>\n

Aramark had a contract to run restaurant services at the children\u2019s hospital in Crumlin, which is run by CHI.<\/p>\n

The description on the invoice sent to Aramark was \u201cadditional services\u201d.<\/p>\n

On the same day, a CHI employee asked a colleague whether there was \u201ca VAT implication\u201d arising from these additional services. The employee \u2013 identified only as staff member A \u2013 later asked a colleague again about the VAT issue.<\/p>\n

\u201cPossibility this invoice could be reviewed by C & AG as it is not related to the normal rental invoices,\u201d the employee wrote.<\/p>\n

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The colleague replied that the payment represented a donation for CHI from an accounting perspective \u201cto go against (an) event\u201d.<\/p>\n

The \u20ac30,000 payment from Aramark was subsequently queried by the Comptroller and Auditor General in his 2024 audit of CHI.<\/p>\n

At a hearing of the committee in April, CHI said the payment had been sought to reduce the cost of tickets for staff for attending a Christmas party.<\/p>\n

The committee heard the request for funding was \u201cverbal\u201d, and while there were some internal emails about the issue, and a former staff member provided some background information, there was no written correspondence available between the hospital group and Aramark.<\/p>\n

However, shortly before the hearing Aramark told The Irish Times the \u20ac30,000 payment was not for a Christmas party, but rather as a settlement for money owed<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The company said: \u201cAramark held a concession for the running of a retail outlet in CHI. Retail revenues fell due to visitor restrictions during Covid. The payment was made as final reconciliation of concessions which was required arising from service interruptions caused by Covid restrictions.\u201d<\/p>\n

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At the hearing, Fine Gael deputy James Geoghegan<\/a> said there was \u201ca significant contradiction of the facts\u201d. He said it was clear that Aramark was \u201cnot accepting\u201d that the money was \u201cfor a Christmas party\u201d.<\/p>\n

Separately, in the letter to the PAC, CHI said that between the beginning of July and the end of the year it would recruit 117 staff for the new national children\u2019s hospital. There is no official opening date set for the hospital.<\/p>\n

Nugent said: \u201cThe onboarding of staff for the national children\u2019s hospital Ireland (NCHI) will be delivered in a phased approach.\u201d A total of 117 personnel would be taken on in the second half of 2026 at a cost of just over \u20ac1 million per month, while 218 staff would be taken on in the first six months of 2027. <\/p>\n

\u201cWhere staff are appointed in advance of the opening of the NCHI, they are deployed across existing CHI sites to ensure they can begin contributing to service delivery and attend relevant training without delay,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A staff member at the group that runs paediatric hospitals in Dublin highlighted in 2022 that a controversial…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":425080,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[72,61,60,7038],"class_list":["post-490517","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-business","tag-business","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-irish-politics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/490517","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=490517"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/490517\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/425080"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=490517"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=490517"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=490517"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}