Beaumont Hospital will today offer an ‘unreserved apology’ after paying €1.5million to a company owned by 20 of its staff members.

The board of the north Dublin hospital will appear before the Dáil Public Accounts Committee (PAC) where the nature of the payments and the governance of the hospital will be probed.

CEO of Beaumont Hospital, Anne Coyle, is expected to apologise for the admission, made in a declaration attached to its 2024 annual accounts which were published in April of this year.

‘The Annual Financial Accounts for 2024 identify a number of historic control issues for which the hospital offers an unreserved apology,’ she will tell TDs.

‘These were disclosed by Beaumont Hospital voluntarily and transparently following identification and serve as testimony to the improvements in financial oversight and governance structure which have been made.’

Beaumont paid out a total of €1.5million to a private radiology clinic, which was owned by 20 of its doctors, in 2024 through third-party insourcing deals.

In a declaration included in its annual accounts, the hospital detailed that it had failed to collect conflict of interest declarations from these doctors at the beginning of the year.

Third-party insourcing, which has largely been scrapped in the HSE, is a practice whereby public hospitals pay private clinics to complete a backlog of cases using public equipment.

The practice was scrapped after Budget 2026, over concerns from the HSE that the public system was growing reliant on private firms, which cost €95million last year.

Beaumont explained in its declaration that €1.5million was paid through two separate contracts, for ultrasound and mammography services, which were not compliant with procurement.

When efforts were made last year to correct the procurement process of the services, the hospital became aware that 20 of its staff members were directors of the company.

Sixteen employees responded to a reminder of their obligation to complete conflict of interest declarations, with four others clarifying that they are directors of an on-site private provider.

Ms Coyle will detail today that improvements have been made to the completion of conflict declarations by public doctors and that other governance issues have been addressed.

Ahead of the publication of its 2025 audit, the hospital’s board of directors will also admit that several of its contractors have been ‘misclassified’ in its accounts.

Neither the briefing document provided to the PAC members or the opening statement details the nature of the misclassification, which the State auditor has been notified of.

Elsewhere, the hospital will stand over a €2million overspend on a new IT system for HR and payroll records, which is due to be entirely scrapped in the coming months.

Ms Coyle will tell TDs that she believes the project, which cost nearly €4million, represented ‘value for money’ as it updates its internal recordkeeping.

But she will detail that the hospital now intends to scrap the system – installed two years ago and continued to pay four retired staff members – and replace it with a new HSE model.

Four former and retired staff members were overpaid by almost €295,000 in the same year the payroll system was installed. The system itself was not approved by the HSE.

A tender for project was never issued by the hospital and the correct steps to waive the contracting process were not followed, the PAC was told.

Members of the Dáil’s PAC today will hear that Ms Coyle believes, despite the procurement issues, the project was largely a success.

She will explain that the overall spend was ‘found to be in line’ with what other hospitals had spent on their HR and payroll systems and updated its recordkeeping skills.

The hospital boss will add that this will now make it easier to transition to a new, unified system which is being rolled out across the HSE later this year.

Ms Coyle will say that the hospital’s new board and executive management team have ‘overhauled and strengthened’ governance controls over the last two years.

‘We now have a robust suite of governance procedures in place and will continue to work to refine and upgrade these as appropriate,’ she will claim.

Despite holding a historic deficit, the hospital – which received €619million in public funds – broke even last year with help from the HSE’s internal finance team.

CEO Ms Coyle will say that Beaumont continues to ‘work closely with the HSE to avoid adding to the deficit’ through cost-saving and value-for-money initiatives.