Inside story: New health tapes confirm HSE recruitment crisis amid fresh concerns over political pressure and financial accountability

Following the revelations in last weekend’s Business Post, new recorded meetings of Health Department officials show more worrying concerns over the HSE’s recruitment crisis, money being spent without proper assessments and a breakdown in trust between those overseeing Ireland’s €21 billion health budget

The Department of Health: recordings heard by the Business Post provide an unprecedented level of transparency into the inner workings of the health system by the very people who are paid to oversee it

In June of last year, Department of Health officials held a virtual meeting to discuss how they would raise issues with the HSE around a €514 million supplementary budget given in the winter of 2020.

The internal meeting was ahead of a bilateral which was held routinely to discuss the financial performance of the health budget.

The officials discussed the lack of information they had about what the additional budget was spent on, and raised ...