The civil servant, the missing file, Micheál Martin and the €2bn bill

MICHEÁL MARTIN and Michael Kelly worked for almost five years from adjoining offices on the sixth floor of the Department of Health headquarters, yet their accounts of the illegal charging of nursing home patients over that time are world’s apart.

Yesterday, the inquiry into the €2 billion controversy blamed “systematic maladministration” extending back 28 years.

Moreover, the Travers Report found that senior officials, rather than ministers, had to bear the vast bulk of the responsibility for failing to act despite repeated warnings. Yet it also pointed to political failures.

The report’s author, former Forfás chief John Travers, found that civil servants failed to adequately inform former Health Minister Micheál Martin, of the serious nature of the issues and the “significant legal, financial and political consequences”.

Yesterday, Mr Kelly, the Department of Health secretary general, became the first casualty of the report. He stepped aside to take up a post with the Higher Education Authority, where he will retain his €166,000 a year salary.

Although cleared of any oversight and wrongdoing in the report, Mr Martin still faces calls for his resignation from opposition parties but received the circumspect backing of the Taoiseach and the Tánaiste.

Startling gaps between the versions of events put forward by Mr Martin and Mr Kelly were revealed in the conflicts of evidence in Mr Travers’s report.

Despite the close proximity of the minister and the secretary general’s offices in Hawkins House, a crucial file due to be sent to the Attorney General for legal advice on the charging issue went “missing” on its supposed passage between these two offices.

While Mr Kelly insists that he clearly recollects twice discussing the legal issues arising from the advice of a health board on the matter with the minister, Mr Martin says plainly: “The fact is that this was not drawn to my attention either formally or informally at any time.”

Coming out fighting and rejecting suggestions that he was damaged, Mr Martin said Mr Travers shows the problem did not emerge on his watch as it was around for nearly 30 years.

“He makes it ringingly clear in his conclusions that there was no substantive briefing of me in relation to this issue and he says any briefing at any time, if there was any, was of the most superficial kind,” he said.

Agreeing that it was indeed extraordinary that the matter had not been dealt with since 1977, the minister stressed that successive ministers had not been adequately appraised.

Last night, Taoiseach Bertie Ahern said that the report does not show that Mr Martin did not do his duty and Health Minister Mary Harney, said she would not serve in Government if she did not have confidence in a Cabinet colleague.

Accepting that the minister’s position would be untenable if he had blocked legal advice or been fully briefed, Mr Ahern said the report does not show that, rather it says the contrary.

Nonetheless, the Travers Report does point to political failures, stating that there were shortcomings at political level in “not probing and questioning” more strongly and assiduously the practice of charging elderly people for their long-stay care since 1976.

Also last night, the union representing high-ranking civil servants said the relationship between ministers, political advisers and civil servants had to be clarified.

Referring to the attendance of Mr Martin’s advisers at a key meeting, the Travers Report warned civil servants not to assume that by giving information and advice to ministerial advisers, that it will go to the minister.

Association of Higher Civil and Public Servants general secretary Sean Ó Riordain said the report had therefore raised concerns over the role of advisers.