{"id":658526,"date":"2026-10-18T15:52:09","date_gmt":"2026-10-18T15:52:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/658526\/"},"modified":"2026-10-18T15:52:09","modified_gmt":"2026-10-18T15:52:09","slug":"hse-moves-to-claw-back-e30m-in-undue-payments-to-staff-the-irish-times","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/658526\/","title":{"rendered":"HSE moves to claw back \u20ac30m in undue payments to staff \u2013 The Irish Times"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"c-paragraph paywall \">The <a href=\"https:\/\/www.irishtimes.com\/tags\/hse\" target=\"_self\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" title=\"https:\/\/www.irishtimes.com\/tags\/hse\">HSE<\/a> overpaid its staff by more than \u20ac30 million in the space of three years with thousands of employees receiving money they were not entitled to.<\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph paywall \">A total of \u20ac9.53 million in overpayments were identified last year, slightly down on the \u20ac9.55 million flagged in 2024.<\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph paywall \">In 2023, just over \u20ac11.1 million in incorrect payments to <a href=\"https:\/\/www.irishtimes.com\/tags\/health-service-executive-hse\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer nofollow noopener\" title=\"https:\/\/www.irishtimes.com\/tags\/health-service-executive-hse\/\">health service<\/a> employees were discovered, according to figures released under the Freedom of Information Act.<\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph paywall \">A total of 3,242 staff were in receipt of overpayments last year, equivalent to an average of almost \u20ac3,000 per person.<\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph paywall \">The HSE said that \u20ac5.163 million in money incorrectly paid out was recovered in 2025.<\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph paywall \">However, more than \u20ac4.3 million worth of overpayments remained outstanding at the end of the year.<\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph paywall \">About 3,700 employees received more money than they were entitled to in 2024, roughly \u20ac2,570 per person.<\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph paywall \">A total of 4,371 staff were overpaid in 2023, an average of \u20ac2,540 in each case.<\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph paywall \">The amount of money outstanding at year end has been falling, however, according to the HSE data.<\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph b-it-article-body__interstitial-link\">[\u00a0<a aria-label=\"Open related story\" class=\"c-link\" href=\"https:\/\/www.irishtimes.com\/health\/2026\/07\/16\/one-consultant-doctor-working-for-hse-earned-more-than-900000-last-year-report-shows\/\" rel=\"noreferrer nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">One consultant doctor working for HSE earned more than \u20ac900,000 last yearOpens in new window<\/a>\u00a0]<\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph paywall \">In 2023, \u20ac5.68 million worth of overpayments were listed as \u201cunrecovered\u201d at the end of the year.<\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph paywall \">That fell to \u20ac4.7 million by December 31st, 2024, and dropped further last year to about \u20ac4.33 million.<\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph paywall \">An information note said the figures covered just \u201cstatutory entities\u201d and \u201cHSE staff only.\u201d<\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph paywall \">A spokesperson said the HSE took overpayments seriously and \u201cworks hard to minimise this occurring\u201d.<\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph paywall \">\u201cThe main reasons for overpayments include data entry errors, late entry of unpaid leave, sick leave-related errors, employees not being removed from the payroll in a timely manner, pension overpayments, and allowance overpayments [or] payments made in error.\u201d <\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph b-it-article-body__interstitial-link\">[\u00a0<a aria-label=\"Open related story\" class=\"c-link\" href=\"https:\/\/www.irishtimes.com\/health\/2026\/10\/18\/health-service-spent-250m-more-on-higher-cost-agency-staff-than-budgeted-for\/\" rel=\"noreferrer nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Health service spent \u20ac250m more on \u2018higher-cost\u2019 agency staff than budgeted forOpens in new window<\/a>\u00a0]<\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph paywall \">The spokesperson said once an overpayment was identified, a formal notification issued to the employee outlined proposed arrangements for repayment.<\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph paywall \">\u201cThe HSE will actively engage with the employee on any deviation from this. Where no response is received, the HSE will initiate an automatic deduction where the employee is in receipt of pay.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The HSE overpaid its staff by more than \u20ac30 million in the space of three years with thousands&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":658527,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[72,1418,2120,61,60],"class_list":["post-658526","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-business","tag-business","tag-health-service-executive-hse","tag-hse","tag-ie","tag-ireland"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/658526","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=658526"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/658526\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/658527"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=658526"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=658526"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=658526"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}