One hospital consultant received more than €900,000 in earnings from the Health Service Executive (HSE) last year, the group’s annual report shows.The report says the doctor received €910,000 in total remuneration in 2025, of which more than €616,000 was recorded as payments for additional work, including overtime, fees and session payments.The HSE report says 11 employees, all of whom are medical consultants, were paid in excess of €500,000 each in 2025.The top 10 earners received a combined €6.8 million in 2025. Four of the top earners were employed in one acute hospital. In 2024, one individual in the HSE received between €690,000 and €700,000.Among HSE hospitals, health insurance claims to the value of about €27 million had not been submitted to insurers for payment as some form of internal action or sign off was required. It says claims worth about €3.4 million were written off.“The HSE acknowledges that delays in submission of patient bills to private insurers can increase the risk that the invoices will not be paid and therefore may have to written off as a bad debt,” the report says.“The HSE estimated that the level of claims that were forfeit and therefore provided for write off in 2025 was in the order of €3.4 million, which accounts for circa 6 per cent of net patient debtors.”The report says the HSE identified an issue in one hospital where patient bills were incorrectly submitted to a private health insurer due to inadequate staff training. The insurer paid the HSE for the incorrect bills and sought repayment. A settlement of €225,000 was agreed with the insurer.“An internal investigation reviewed the relevant transactions and found no evidence of wrongdoing, concluding that training and supervisory weaknesses were the cause,” the report says. “The hospital has since strengthened training and introduced enhanced oversight.”A review of about 18,000 transactions between 2020 and 2025 identified 36 duplicate payments made to suppliers or other parties with a total value of €645,000. About 84 per cent of the amounts involved has been recouped.The report also reveals writedowns running to several million euro in relation to stock purchased by the HSE during the Covid-19 pandemic. Expenditure on vaccines to the value of €8.4 million has been written off.“This charge of €8.4 million is in relation to Covid-19 stocks that have expired, ie they have either passed the manufacturers expiry date or are deemed no longer clinically appropriate and are therefore no longer suitable for administration.”The report shows the HSE spent more than €8 million last year on storing and destroying personal protective equipment (PPE) that was out of date.“The HSE has incurred circa €1.5 million in 2025 in relation to the storage of legacy and obsolete PPE stocks,” it says.“However as of time of writing all obsolete items have been destroyed. These stocks have had to be destroyed in an environmentally safe manner requiring the services of a specialist supplier. The costs included in 2025 are €6.7 million.”