Missing documents: A long history of loss and excuses

A GOVERNMENT department receives a warning about an issue but the minister is never made aware of the problem — sound familiar?

It’s a pattern that has emerged with the Government in recent years. A crisis erupts and it turns out the department had advance notice that said crisis was coming down the line.

When the time comes, however, to hold someone accountable, the minister of the day says simply: “Sorry, but it never reached me.”

It’s a convenient excuse. But is it a credible one?

One of the most glaring examples occurred during the scandal over illegal nursing home charges.

The scandal erupted in October 2004. But the Department of Health had known about the issue for some years, and in December 2003, decided to send a submission to the Attorney General (AG) seeking advice on whether the charges were legal or not.

The folder containing the submission never made it to the AG’s office. However, according to one departmental official, it did make it to the outer office of the then Health Minister Micheal Martin in 2004. But no further, apparently.

That official told John Travers, who inquired into the affair, of seeing the folder in the outer office. But Mr Martin told Mr Travers he had never seen the submission, stating it was “clear that I was not shown or asked to comment on the file”.

Mr Travers effectively exonerated Mr Martin, saying: “Absolutely no documentation was made available to me to demonstrate or to indicate that the minister had been fully and adequately briefed by the department on the serious nature of the issues arising.”

A mistake, then — a failure by someone to pass the file to the minister. If that was the first and last time it happened, the public might be prepared to accept it. But it was not.

Last August, it emerged Aer Lingus was to end its Shannon-Heathrow service and begin a new route from Belfast to Heathrow.

The Irish Examiner established that Mr Dempsey’s department had known about the issue since June. Furthermore, the most senior civil servant in the Department of the Taoiseach, Dermot McCarthy, knew about the issue on July 27. But the Taoiseach was not told at the time. And Mr Dempsey said he was informed of Aer Lingus’s imminent departure on August 3.

A Department of Transport report supported Mr Dempsey’s statement he was not informed until that date.

The report found the secretary general of the department knew since June 14, having received an email about the issue, but failed to make Mr Dempsey aware of same.

Then the cancer-screening crisis with two separate issues which, the public is being asked to accept, never came to the attention of the Health Minister Mary Harney.

The first issue concerned the recall for further investigation of 97 women who had ultrasounds at Portlaoise Hospital.

Details of the recall were announced unexpectedly by a HSE official at the Oireachtas Committee on Health and Children on November 22. According to Ms Harney, the first she heard of this recall was the night before this date.

But yet again, it turns out the department had heard well before the minister.

A report into the issue found the department was given details of the review twice — once in a briefing note to the minister’s advisor on September 28 and on November 6 in material sent by the HSE for a ministerial statement.

A second issue of which Ms Harney expressed no prior knowledge is the 2002 letter from surgeon Peter Naughton warning of the problems at Portlaoise.

The department told one newspaper no such letter existed.

Ms Harney told the Dáil in November the first letter her department received from Mr Naughton was in 2005 and there was no earlier correspondence.

Now, it appears the letter did exist, and was received by the department in 2002.

Errors do happen — that’s human nature. Occasionally, a file will go missing or a message will not be passed up the line.

But it seems to be happening regularly — to the point where, if a crisis erupts, it is almost expected that the relevant minister will say they had no advance notice. Convenient, yes. Credible? The more it happens, the less credible it gets.