Health staff ‘thought file was sent to Martin’

Paul O’Brien

“We understood that the papers had gone into the minister’s office at that stage,” principal officer Charlie Hardy told the Joint Oireachtas Committee on Health and Children, which is investigating the issue.

Mr Martin, the current Enterprise Minister, has denied ever being made aware of the illegal charges, which could cost the State up to 2 billion to refund, while he was at the Department of Health.

The file, prepared in January 2004, contained a background paper and a draft letter to the Attorney General seeking legal advice on whether the charges were valid. The former secretary general of the department, Michael Kelly, said he submitted the file to the minister’s private office for consideration.

A department official told John Travers, the author of a report into the issue, that she had seen the file in the outer office of the minister’s private office early in 2004, and had a discussion with an official there about it.

But Mr Martin has denied ever being shown the file or asked to comment on it. In addition, he has said no person from his office “remembers having sight of or handling the file.”

The file seemed to disappear, Mr Travers found in his report, and the letter to the Attorney General was never delivered. Mr Travers criticised department staff for failing to follow up when legal advice was not forthcoming from the Attorney General. Had they done so, they would have realised the letter seeking his advice had not in fact been sent.

Yesterday, however, Mr Hardy said staff at the department believed the file had gone to the minister’s private office in early 2004.

For that reason, he added, he didn’t feel in a position “to interfere” when months passed without legal advice being received from the Attorney General.

At a meeting of senior department officials and health board CEOs on March 29, 2004, it was stated that legal advice had been sought. However, Mr Hardy said he was informed after the meeting that this was not the case. It was “made clear” to him that the file remained in the minister’s office. He could not remember who had told him this. However, “everyone else around the department (was) of that view”, he told the committee. “We understood that the letter was in the minister’s office.”

Meanwhile, assistant secretary Dermot Smyth denied the illegal charges issue had been “parked” in 2004. He acknowledged there had been failings within the department in pursuing the issue.

However, senior officials had been seeking clarification on the wider issues of eligibility for, and entitlement to, long-stay care since 2001. “We did everything we could to bring this issue to a head,” he said.