THE special advisers to former Health Minister Micheál Martin yesterday admitted they failed to read a key legal opinion warning that nursing home charges being levied by the State were illegal.

THE political advisers to Micheál Martin when he was at the Department of Health will face a grilling next week over illegal nursing home charges.

A former top civil servant in the Health Department today hit back at how he was treated in the illegal nursing homes charges affair.

A HIGHER Education Authority (HEA) board member has resigned in protest at the transfer of the Department of Health’s secretary general, Michael Kelly, to the Authority as full-time chairman.

Several former health ministers are reportedly set to be called before an Oireachtas investigation into the scandal surrounding illegal nursing home fees.

MICHEÁL MARTIN and Michael Kelly worked for almost five years from adjoining offices on the sixth floor of the Department of Health headquarters, yet their accounts of the illegal charging of nursing home patients over that time are world’s apart.

The secretary general of the Department of Health today appeared to be the first casualty in the fall-out from the Travers Report into illegal nursing home charges.

The Travers Report into how the Department of Health allowed nursing home fees to be levied on medical card holders is due to be published today.