Kelly made three draft statements

THE Travers report into the Health Department’s handling of nursing home charges was delayed because the secretary general only submitted his final statement on the day the report was due.

It emerged yesterday that Michael Kelly provided three separate draft statements to the inquiry before submitting his final version on March 1, the day John Travers was due to submit his report to the Tánaiste.

The final version was submitted at 10.06am on March 1. According to Mr Travers, it made it necessary for him to hold back the report he was to deliver to Mary Harney that day as it made him necessary to interview a number of people again. In the event, he delivered it three days later.

The differences between the four versions of Mr Kelly’s statement are subtle but significant, most relating to the implications of the missing file, which contained the submission to be made to the office of the Attorney General.

In earlier versions of the statement Mr Kelly says he accepts that “my failure to recollect and follow-up on the submission is open to criticism”. In the final statement, the “my failure” is changed to a more generic “the failure”.

The one unanswered question that remains following the Travers’s report is what happened to the file. In each statement, Mr Kelly intimated that he most likely gave it to the then minister Micheál Martin.

However, because there of inadequacies in the logging system, Mr Kelly was not in a position to provide documentary verification. Mr Martin, in his statement, insisted that “it is clear that I was not shown or asked about the file”. He went on to say that no person from his private office remembered having sight of or handling the file.

It is clear that Mr Kelly was becoming increasingly aware of the pressure he was coming under as a result of the missing file.

In his first draft statement of February 25 he said he understood that in early 2004 “the file was observed by another official of the department in the outer office of the minister’s office at some point, but I have no direct information on this point myself.”

It is clear that Mr Kelly himself spoke to this official after supplying the first draft and before delivering his final submission.

The final statement contains a much stronger degree of corroboration.

He now says, without qualification, that the file was observed by another official in the outer office of the minister’s office suite.

He adds: “As a trusted and experienced member of the department’s staff I have no reason to doubt the validity of the very clear and explicit recollection described by this official.” However, this point does not seem to be dealt with directly in the report.

Mr Travers refers to an official who recalled being in the office of the secretariat in early 2004, being approached by an official working in the ministerial outer office in relation to the papers at issue. No mention is made of whether or not the official saw the missing file.

The file disappeared into a void somewhere in Hawkins House and led to a similar void in terms of inaction. It took ten months - by which time a new minister was in place - before the advice was finally sought from the AG.

Until it materialises the missing file will provide the ‘grassy knoll’ of this affair.