St Vincent’s Hospital has been told it must pay its chief executive’s salary entirely from private funds, if it refuses to cut his unapproved €292,669 pay packet.

Almost €150,000 in cancer charity donations has instead been given to senior hospital chiefs already receiving six-figure publicly-funded salaries.

Any business that did not prepare to meet staffing needs in a way that would allow it to continue delivering adequate services to its customers would not have a rosy future.

St Vincent’s Hospital chiefs are due to meet today to consider calls from the HSE to end controversial top-up payments to senior staff.

The Chair of the Public Accounts Committee has said that he is concerned at the timing of the decision by the St Vincent’s Hospital to outline that it pays salary top-ups.

Former CRC boss Paul Kiely deliberately misled the public accounts committee over a claimed “phantom” €666,000 Mater pension fund.

A homeless charity has blamed the Central Remedial Clinic salary top-up scandal for a 20% fall in donations in the run-up to Christmas.

Health chiefs are set to investigate claims by a senator that there was “a cover-up” by management at St Vincent’s Hospital over the fraudulent charging of health insurers for cancer drugs.

Even in a society terribly bruised by too many shameful revelations, even in a society weary of scandal and greed, the last weeks have been more than disappointing for anyone who cherishes social equity and aspires to the benefits of proactive transparency in public life.

The chairman of the Dáil's Public Accounts Committee has said that four more agencies which are believed to have breached public pay rules will be named tomorrow.

Central Remedial Clinic officials will not be allowed to “walk off into the sunset” and will be forced to face the consequences of the top-ups scandal engulfing the group.

The Central Remedial Clinic has failed to clarify if the senior officials who resigned from the scandal-hit group last night received lavish lump sum retirement packages secretly funded by charitable donations.

The Central Remedial Clinic must provide “forensic” details for how “every cent” of the Santa Bear appeal is spent if it wants to protect the vital fundraising campaign from the unrelated top-ups controversy.

The recently retired boss of the Central Remedial Clinic, Brian Conlon, will face a grilling over salary top-ups at the agency when he appears before the Dáil’s Public Accounts Committee next month.

The escalating scandal around top-up payments at the Central Remedial Clinic ticks nearly all the boxes needed to define it as the perfect Celtic Tiger/Fianna Fáil rotten can of worms.

The Central Remedial Clinic is paying €669,000 a year into a “phantom” Mater Hospital pension fund officials believe should have ended a decade ago.

A lump sum amounting to €200,000 was paid out of charitable donations to the former chief executive of the Central Remedial Clinic who retired in June.

The CRC lied to the HSE by claiming its chief executive’s salary was in compliance with pay scales in July when in reality it included €40,000-worth of charity-funded top-ups.

Anyone tuning into yesterday’s meeting of the Dáil’s Public Accounts Committee would be forgiven for wondering if we have learnt anything from all that has happened in recent years.

Scandal-struck Central Remedial Clinic (CRC) chiefs said they face being sued if they enforce salary cuts on bosses getting top-ups from public donations.

Director and acting chief executive of the Central Remedial Clinic, Jim Nugent, has rejected calls for his resignation in light of controversy surrounging top-up payments to nine senior staff members at the disability agency.

The Central Remedial Clinic (CRC) is insisting it came to an agreement with the Health Service Executive (HSE) in 2009 to allow for the top-up of some salaries.

Representatives from the Central Remedial Clinic (CRC) will today take questions from TDs on private salary top-ups.

The Central Remedial Clinic could be hauled before the Dáil’s Public Accounts Committee (PAC) as soon as next week to give a detailed response to serious concerns over its use of millions of euro worth of charitable donations.

Investigations into top-up payments to state-funded agencies are expected to widen beyond health following demands that other ministers examine their own agencies.

THE scandal at the Central Remedial Clinic is a gift to the Government. Here we have an organisation seemingly plundering charitable funds, to feather the nests of a group of Fianna Fáil insiders, all of whom can be linked easily to former Taoiseach Bertie Ahern.

The Coombe Maternity Hospital in Dublin has admitted it is paying salary top-ups to two senior staff.

Health Minister James Reilly has insisted any funding cuts to agencies giving top-ups to high-ranking officials will not hit patient services.

The board of the Central Remedial Clinic must "answer up" to questions raised about the on-going controversy surrounding top-up payments to senior staff, the Taoiseach has warned.

Though they are disappointing, and though they renew the chastening scepticism that makes it hard to believe we will ever achieve the openness and proactive social equity that underpin the kind of society we profess to admire, ongoing revelations about top-ups, under-the-counter sweeteners, off-radar bonuses, or secret second salaries enjoyed by some health service managers are just another instalment in that ongoing Irish saga — that those who can look after themselves do so even if that puts them well beyond essential line-in-the-sand disciplines of the day.

The controversy over top-up payments to senior staff at the Central Remedial Clinic has erupted into an angry war of words between the organisation’s ex-chairman and the HSE.

All health bodies giving top-ups to senior officials will be hauled before the head of the HSE between now and Christmas to explain how they will “immediately” end the ‘second salaries’ culture.

Using charity funds to top up the payments of some staff of the Central Remedial Clinic is “not acceptable in any circumstances”, the Taoiseach has said.

Social Protection Minister Joan Burton has called for the establishment of a charities regulator to ensure transparency in the sector following outrage over the Central Remedial Clinic’s (CRC) admission that public donations were used to top-up salaries of nine staff members.

Hospitals and health agencies which breach pay caps for managers and give out top-up payments could face punitive cuts to their overall budgets, Tánaiste Eamon Gilmore has warned.

The sense of public outrage at the latest top-up disclosures in relation to the Central Remedial Clinic (CRC) is matched only by the public incredulity that such a thing could be allowed to happen.

Three quarters of the €27.856m donated to the charity wing of the Central Remedial Clinic between 1998 and 2011 was not sent on to the facility.

Education Minister Ruairí Quinn has called for the board of the Central Remedial Clinic to quit as the controversy over the use of public donations to top-up the salaries of well-paid managers escalates.

Disability service campaigners have branded the deepening Central Remedial Clinic top-ups scandal as “disgusting” and said the crisis has the potential to “cripple” the charity sector.

The Taoiseach said he was “annoyed” by top-up payments made to senior hospital management over and above agreed salary scales.

The disclosure that Dr Rhona Mahony, the master of the National Maternity Hospital, was paid a top-up of €53,009 in a CEO allowance, and €45,000 in private patient fees, in addition to her salary of €183,562 has sparked considerable public uneasiness.