THE Health Service Executive says the Department of Finance has published unreliable figures showing a real cut last year in spending on hospitals, the Sunday Tribune has learned.

The Revised Estimates volumes published annually by finance show a 2.8% drop after inflation in the out-turn for spending by the HSE's National Hospitals Office in 2006 compared to 2005. A HSE spokesman said:

"The schedules to the vote for 2005 are not a reliable source as the vote was only introduced in 2005 and there was no experience of vote management."

Although the HSE now says the Department of Finance publications cannot be trusted as a record of its spending on hospitals, neither the HSE nor finance had plans to publish the correct record when contacted by the Tribune this weekend.

Following the decision by health minister Mary Harney to give responsibility for managing its own vote to the newly-established HSE, finance minister Brian Cowen warned Harney in a letter, which was subsequently published, that she had "the central role in managing the system" and must decide that "all necessary controls and arrangements" were in place "before responsibility for more than Euro10bn is handed over to the new organisation".

The 2007 and 2006 Revised Estimates figures published by the Department of Finance show that, while the overall budget for the HSE increased by 14.6%, the budget for the National Hospitals Office increased by only 2.3%, from Euro4.439bn to Euro4.540bn, when the out-turns for 2005 and 2006 were compared.

According to the Central Statistics Office, given that inflation in the public sector was running at just over 5% in 2006, this means that although the HSE's overall budget increased in real terms by 8.9%, the hospital budget fell by 2.8%.

The Revised Estimates are published annually and presented to the D�il in February after spending adjustments and announcements from the budget are incorporated. They are the official record of how public money is spent in the previous year and are presented to the D�il for accountability.

In response to queries on the conflicting figures, the HSE, the Department of Health and the Department of Finance all said, "The out-turn figures in the Revised Estimates are provisional and subject to refinement prior to publication of the final out-turn figures in the Annual Appropriations Accounts which must be signed off by the Comptroller and Auditor General by end September each year."

However, the Annual Appropriations Accounts do not give details of the breakdown in spending so final figures for what was actually spent on hospitals is not publicly available. Last year, over a quarter of all public money allocated by government to current (day-to-day) spending - Euro11.5bn - went to the HSE.

The departments of Health and Finance also commented: "The HSE derives its figures from some 17 separate financial systems. The HSE has in place a reconciliation process between different accounting systems which the C&AG relies upon to carry out his statutory audit role."