Junior ministers made aware of charges issue ‘urgency’
Ivor Callely, who has since moved to the Department of Transport, and Tim O’Malley, who remains a Minister of State at the Department of Health, both attended a meeting in December 2003 at which the issue was raised in the absence of Mr Martin, who arrived late.
The meeting was one of several held each year between the chief executives of the health boards and the senior officials who made up the department’s management advisory committee (MAC).
Spending plans for 2004 and the ongoing health services reform programme were the main themes of the meeting, but the agenda also included a list of five “items for brief mention” which included the nursing home charges.
Minutes supplied to the Travers inquiry state that it was brought to the meeting’s attention that the Ombudsman had challenged the charges, that there were varying views from different legal advisers, that there might be a need for legislation, that the issue was one of “relative urgency” and that it “would be necessary to get a definitive legal assessment of the present arrangement as a first step”.
Department secretary general Michael Kelly, who is to resign his position as a result of the report, gave further details about the discussions in his statement to the inquiry.
Mr Kelly said: “Given the participation of Ministers of State Callely and O’Malley and advisers in the earlier part of the meeting they would also have been in possession of the information necessary to brief the minister or to follow up any concerns they had in their own right. Notes taken by the secretary at the meeting indicate that Minister of State Callely had indicated his intention to brief both the Taoiseach and the minister on the problem.”
This would appear to contradict Mr Callely’s recollection of the meeting, which was that the discussion focused on “eligibility issues rather than the legality of charges”. Mr Callely, who had specific responsibility for the elderly, has also said he did not raise the issue with Mr Martin because he did not realise people were being charged.
The inquiry conducted interviews with two former secretary generals and nine serving senior officers in addition to special advisers and senior figures in specialist health agencies.
Author John Travers does, however, stress that the problems were due to “long-term systemic corporate failure”, effectively indicting every senior management figure under successive governments since 1976.
“I have come across many expressions of views in the course of preparing this report that suggest that over the years ministers were ‘informed’, ‘advised’, ‘briefed’, ‘told’ in relation to the issues concerned,” Mr Travers reported.
“However, even if all such contentions are correct ... they would be completely inadequate to what was required given the nature, substance, risks and inevitable negative consequences of the practices in place.”
