{"id":640591,"date":"2026-09-30T13:10:11","date_gmt":"2026-09-30T13:10:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/640591\/"},"modified":"2026-09-30T13:10:11","modified_gmt":"2026-09-30T13:10:11","slug":"hse-financial-imbalance-at-start-of-year-contributed-to-problems-says-chief-executive-the-irish-times","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/640591\/","title":{"rendered":"HSE financial \u2018imbalance\u2019 at start of year contributed to problems, says chief executive \u2013 The Irish Times"},"content":{"rendered":"

The health service had \u201ca significant underlying financial imbalance\u201d entering this year, which has contributed to its serious financial difficulties, the HSE chief executive Anne O\u2019Connor <\/a>has told staff.<\/p>\n

In a Tuesday bulletin, she maintained this included \u201cvery substantial\u201d savings earmarked originally for last year which were not delivered and were carried forward into 2026 along with a requirement to generate additional efficiencies.<\/p>\n

O\u2019Connor <\/a>told Health Service Executive <\/a>personnel that at the end of August the HSE was \u20ac681 million over budget, equivalent to approximately 4 per cent of expenditure. <\/p>\n

[\u00a0Government to authorise additional cash as \u20ac700m agreed in April runs outOpens in new window<\/a>\u00a0]<\/p>\n

The D\u00e1il\u2019s Committee of Public Accounts heard last week that the deficit could reach \u20ac1 billion by the end of the year. <\/p>\n

It is understood that O\u2019Connor\u2019s comments about the \u201cunderlying financial imbalance\u201d refer to unrealised financial savings dating back to last year. <\/p>\n

The national service plan for the year says the HSE had been set a target of delivering savings of \u20ac633 million in 2025. However, it suggests that \u20ac327 million in these proposed pay and non-pay savings were not realised last year on a permanent basis.<\/p>\n

The national service plan maintained that these outstanding savings from 2025 would have to be found in addition to \u20ac181 million in new savings earmarked for this year.<\/p>\n

Earlier this month the Government removed spending autonomy from four of the six HSE regions countrywide and introduced tighter controls.<\/p>\n

Minister for Public Expenditure Jack Chambers <\/a>strongly criticised overspending in parts of the organisation and indicated that previous attempts to rein in expenditure had been unsuccessful.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhat we saw in the August figures was a worsening of that [overspending] and essentially completely ineffective management of the control system by the HSE and really poor performance by certain regions when it comes to financial management, when it comes to upholding the staff allocation that they were given,\u201d Chambers told The Irish Times Inside Politics podcast.<\/p>\n

O\u2019Connor in her message to staff sought to place the overrun in the context of surging demand and a difficult budgetary situation even as the year began.<\/p>\n

She said rising demand had contributed to the \u20ac681 million deficit at the end of August, \u201cas has the significant underlying financial imbalance with which we entered 2026, including a very substantial amount of savings planned for 2025 that were not delivered and therefore carried forward into this year. These factors provide important context. But … our focus must be on stronger financial management,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The health service had \u201ca significant underlying financial imbalance\u201d entering this year, which has contributed to its serious…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":640592,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[34],"tags":[174651,103,397,396,2120,61,60,13808],"class_list":["post-640591","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-healthcare","tag-anne-oconnor","tag-health","tag-health-care","tag-healthcare","tag-hse","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-jack-chambers"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/640591","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=640591"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/640591\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/640592"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=640591"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=640591"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=640591"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}