FF and PDs ‘jumpy and paranoid’ over Travers Report

GOVERNMENT members of the Oireachtas Health Committee will today be accused of closing ranks to protect former Health Minister Micheal Martin from being criticised in a committee report into the illegal nursing home charges scandal.

After hearing two months of evidence on the Travers Report into the scandal and the background to the affair, the Oireachtas Health Committee is due to publish its final report on the matter tomorrow.

However, frustrated at the manner in which the committee’s report was finalised, Labour and Fine Gael will today outline how critical conclusions were kept out of the report.

In all, Fine Gael health spokesman Liam Twomey and Labour counterpart Liz McManus will publish 12 conclusions which they say the Health Committee refused to include in its report. In addition they will detail how Fianna Fáil and PD committee members opposed any negative mention of former Health Ministers and refused to allow appendices containing the numerous and varied submissions received during the committee’s deliberations.

Pledging to publish all such material today, Ms McManus said the actions of the Government TDs defeated the purpose of having all-party parliamentary committees.

“What is the point of having committees doing all this hard work ... and then finding what emerges is an emasculated report?”

Ms McManus said the Fine Gael/Labour split from the committee had been necessitated by the manner in which Government members blocked all minority views in private committee meetings last week at which the final version of the report was agreed.

Mr Twomey said the Government members of the committee had been “jumpy and paranoid” about any reference to Mr Martin and junior ministers in the Department of Health.

“Whenever anything critical of Minister Martin and the junior ministers came up the Government members closed ranks,” he said.

As with the Travers Report, the final version of the Health Committee report will stop short of directly criticising politicians and recommend the role of special advisers and their relationships with ministers be clarified.