Illegal fees: Martin’s absence ‘irrelevant’

THE senior health board executive who first queried the legal basis of charging long-stay patients said yesterday it was “immaterial” that then Health Minister Micheál Martin was absent when the issue was discussed at a crucial meeting.

Pat McLoughlin, the chief executive of the former South Eastern Health Board told the Oireachtas Health Committee that it was an issue that was being dealt with by the chief executives of health boards and the secretary general of the Department of Health, Michael Kelly. The ministers and his junior ministers traditionally attended only one of the Management Advisory Committee meetings, usually in December.

Mr McLaughlin said the matter had not been deliberately tabled on the agenda of the meeting in December 2003 because the ministers would be in attendance. He said his view was that it was a matter more properly dealt with at official level. For that reason, he had not personally raised it with any of the ministers.

His main concern, he said, was that the issue not be left in a vacuum. The advice the SEHB had obtained in relation to problems over the legal basis of the charges was “compelling”, he said, but seemed to be in conflict with the advice available to the department. “We needed a decision at the MAC meeting. I was concerned that an opportunity would be lost if we did not get the situation clarified.”

He said he was satisfied after the meeting at Mr Kelly’s decision to refer the matter to the Attorney General.

However, Mr McLoughlin said an eight-page summary of the SEHB’s legal opinion was circulated before the meeting. The summary would have been included in Mr Martin’s briefing paper.

Mr McLoughlin, in his only direct comment on the report by John Travers into the debacle, emphasised the difficulties that were caused when the correspondence from the secretary general seeking legal advice from the Attorney General went missing.

“The simplest things like a tracing system for files let you down,” he said.

The file seeking legal advice, prepared after the MAC meeting in December 2003 was not sent to the AG until 10 months later, in October 2004. At two MAC meetings during that period, CEOs of health boards were assured by department officials that a response was pending.

“All of us went along with believing for almost a year that it was being dealt with,” he said.