SIPTU to pay €70k for HSE training fund report

SIPTU is to pay the €70,000 cost of an expert report on the account at the centre of the controversial HSE SKILL training fund.

This is despite the fact the union did not commission the report or know the account existed until an inquiry was launched into it.

Issues with the account — the signatories to which were SIPTU official Matt Merrigan and union member Jack Kelly — first became public at the start of the summer as part of an investigation into the HSE’s SKILL training fund.

A considerable part of the €4.48m lodged in the health and local authority levy fund had come from SKILL, and the HSE probe found serious breaches in the way the training fund was governed, as well as a lack of receipts for much of the money paid out.

In subsequent months, details emerged of further payments into the account, including €924,000 from the Health Service National Partnership Forum.

In recent weeks, SIPTU general secretary Joe O’Flynn confirmed legal advisers to Matt Merrigan and Jack Kelly had commissioned a forensic examination of the operation of the account by accounting firm Grant Thornton and the trustees could not conclude their report until reviewing the Grant Thornton report.

The union had intended to complete its own report before the two meetings of its executive which are due to take place tomorrow and Friday this week.

However, as of yesterday, it had still not received the Grant Thornton material.

A union source said the matter would be discussed at the executive meeting. It is likely the executive will be given a timescale for completion of the union report and will also sanction the union bearing the cost of the Grant Thornton report.

It is understood that the Public Accounts Committee, which is probing the HSE SKILL fund, is becoming very frustrated at the lack of progress and has told the union it wants to have the information before it by mid-February at the latest so that it can complete its own investigation before the next general election.