An tOrd Gnó - Order of Business
Dail Éireann — 2026-03-24
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Aidan Farrelly (SD), Kildare North

A review of income used by Naas General Hospital under the National Treatment Purchase Fund has found that consultants were paid €2 million between 2022 and 2025. Of this, close to €500,000 was paid to two external companies, in which a director in each company also works as a consultant at Tallaght hospital. The audit found that consultants were paid significantly higher levels under the fee-per-patient structure than they would have been through standard contractual or overtime arrangements. More importantly, there was no evidence of approval being sought by hospital management for a derogation from standard public procurement procedures. First, what are the consequences if and when reviews find such misappropriation of NTPF funds? Second, is it time for a national review of the NTPF programme to make sure that this is not a widespread issue in hospitals throughout the country?

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Source: Houses of the Oireachtas. Licensed under CC BY 4.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/). The Official Report is revised after first publication; the fetch timestamp below identifies the version quoted.

Record URI: https://data.oireachtas.ie/akn/ie/debateRecord/dail/2026-03-24/debate/main
Retrieved: 2026-09-14T01:01:03+00:00
Sitting date: 2026-03-24