Junior ministers made aware of charges issue ‘urgency’

MICHEÁL MARTIN’S two junior ministers were made aware of the “urgency” surrounding the nursing home charges issue a full year before it erupted in controversy last December.

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).