Role of advisers under the spotlight

THE role of ministerial special advisers has come under intense scrutiny following the publication of the Travers Report.

While the report found there was nothing to indicate Minister Micheál Martin was adequately briefed on the nursing home charges issue by his officials while at the Department of Health, it did appear to indict his special advisers.

The advisers - who are political appointments and not civil servants - had been present at a meeting of senior department officials and health board CEOs in Dublin’s Gresham Hotel on December 16, 2003, at which the issue was raised.

It was decided prior to Mr Martin’s arrival at the meeting to refer the matter for legal advice to the Attorney General.

According to the Travers Report, Minister of State Ivor Callely, who was at the meeting, saw no need to brief Mr Martin subsequently because, among other reasons, the latter’s “officials and advisers” were at the meeting. The then secretary general of the department, Michael Kelly, told the report author that the advisers would “have been in the possession of the information necessary to brief the minister or to follow up any concerns they had in their own right”.

The advisers, however, failed to tell Mr Martin about the issue.

“The special advisers to the minister might have been expected to be more active in examining and probing the underlying issues,” the report found. It represented “a shortcoming of judgment” on their part, it added.

Mr Martin yesterday insisted that not only did the report exonerate him, but it exonerated his advisers, too. The nursing home charges issue had only received brief mention at the December 16, 2003, meeting, a spokeswoman said, and it was the department officials who should have followed up on the matter. The minister believed his advisers to be “extremely hard-working” and continued “to value their advice and commitment”, the spokeswoman added. He would continue to rely on his advisers at the Department of Enterprise, where he is now minister. The current Health Minister, Tánaiste Mary Harney, also relies heavily on her special advisers. Yesterday, a spokesman for Ms Harney said she, too, would continue to do so, although she would be examining the recommendations about advisers made in the report.

The report says it should be clear that advisers to any Health Minister “are not part of the line management of the department”.

It also recommends that “the briefing of special advisors by department officials, and the fact that special advisers attend particular meetings, should not be considered, and should not be accepted as, an alternative to the direct briefing of the minister on important areas of policy and operation”.