A private company run by medical consultants at Beaumont received contracts from the public hospital to the value of about €6.2 million over a six-year period from 2019 outside of any public procurement process, an Oireachtas committee has been told. Beaumont Hospital chief executive Anne Coyle told the Dáil Public Accounts Committee on Thursday that in 2019 previous management maintained a derogation from public procurement rules should apply because of demand for radiology services and the importance of the provision of timely access to scans.She said the radiology contract was subsequently rolled over in 2024 as it was believed the original derogation still applied. The committee also heard that a payroll and human resources system, which went over budget by €2 million, had also been secured without going through public procurement procedures. The annual financial statement for the hospital for 2024 revealed that Beaumont had paid €1.5 million to a company located on its campus for the provision of the radiology services on an outsourced and insourced basis. The statement said 20 employees of the hospital were directors of the private provider. However, only four declared their directorships in their statement of interests to the hospital.David Sweeney, deputy chief executive at the hospital, said he believed the income generated by the private company went to four consultants.Questioned by James Geoghegan of Fine Gael, Coyle said the total amount paid to the private radiology company since 2019 was €6.2 million. She said there had been no public procurement for the contracts.Hospital management told Fianna Fáil TD Albert Dolan that a “peppercorn rent” of €1,700 per month was set for lease of the land at Beaumont on which the consultants’ private clinic is based. The building constructed on the land at Beaumont as well as equipment installed were owned by the consultants, the hospital said. Coyle told the committee that the hospital offered “an unreserved apology” in relation to a number of historic control issues identified in the 2024 financial statement.[ Beaumont Hospital paid €1.5m to company in which 20 staff were directors without competitive processOpens in new window ]Geoghegan asked on a number of occasions for what exactly was the hospital apologising. He and acting committee chairman Paul McAuliffe of Fianna Fáil maintained that the application of the derogation from public procurement for the radiology contract in 2019 had been incorrect.Geoghegan suggested the Beaumont management team had taken advice before the hearing and had been given an instruction not to acknowledge that the derogation was wrong, which Coyle denied. “Why can’t you as CEO say I accept the derogation was incorrectly applied?” Geoghan asked. “It should not have been the case the €6.2 million went to a company without any public procurement.”Coyle said there had been a deficit in her understanding of public procurement and the hospital’s focus had been on the future.Geoghegan said the derogation could not be justified and he suggested to Coyle that she knew that.The hospital chief executive subsequently said she would include the derogation in 2019 and 2024 in her unreserved apology.“Our focus has been on addressing the conflicts of interest and getting it back out to procurement and making sure it was properly compliant. The challenge is balancing the past with the present and the future.”She said the IT project that was not properly compliant with public procurement was also included in the hospital’s apology.Separately Francis Hanlon, director of finance at Beaumont, said a review was under way to ensure the hospital was compliant with relevant contracts tax and professional services withholding tax in relation to about 60 out of 3,000 vendors.