National Director of Procurement, HSE

John Swords is the National Director of Procurement in the Health Service Executive (HSE). The HSE provides all of Ireland's public health services in hospitals and communities across the country and is the largest purchaser of goods and services in the State.  In this capacity, John leads procurement with a firm focus to enable a better service, with improved outcomes for patients and service users in a challenging environment.

John has been instrumental in progressing the strategic procurement journey across the organisation. With a keen interest on driving transformation through collaboration and innovation, John has led on developing and improving the Procurement Sourcing Plan, Compliance Improvement, development and roll out of the National Logistics Service along with supporting the National Finance Reform and Stabilisation Programmes.

The HSE Corporate Procurement Plan 2022-2024 sets out the key priorities to improve and enhance procurement activities within the health service.  John’s procurement leadership across health incorporates strong emphasis on the importance of sustainability as being critical to our collective obligations to provide safe patient care and contribute to reducing our collective carbon footprint.  John is a member of the HSE Climate Action Steering Group and is leading on two key programmes of work in relation to Green Procurement and Procurement Decarbonisation Trajectory.

Cross border collaborative working in health and social care is a high priority for John and in this regard he chairs the Procurement CAWT (Cooperation And Working Together) Group, a partnership between the Health and Social Care Services in Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland, which is EU funded.  As a member of the OGP (Office of Government Procurement) Reform Board, John is committed to procurement excellence and the overall public procurement reform programme. He is  also a member of the GS1 Ireland Board of Directors whose standards improve the efficiency, safety and visibility of supply chains across physical and digital channels in 25 sectors.