Magee decision highlights unhealthy tensions at top
But despite the public protestations, Cathal Magee’s departure from his €322,000-a-year post just 20 months into a five-year contract has focused attention yet again on tensions at the top of the health service.
Mr Magee’s job has effectively been consigned to the dustbin as part of Health Minister James Reilly’s system-wide reform plans.
Under the new initiative, a director general will head up the service and be supported by six lower-down directorate posts.
Mr Magee yesterday insisted he does not want the DG role as it is “a very different structure” to his current job, and that his departure has “nothing to do with the tensions and difficulties” involved in the health service.
However, the fact Dr Reilly said Mr Magee — a Mary Harney appointment — would have to re-apply for his job when the reform plans were first stated last winter is unlikely to have received a warm response.
When his appointment was confirmed in May 2010, the 58-year-old was considered a rank outsider to replace Prof Brendan Drumm — so much so that he was not even on public shortlists.
The former eircom CEO had not worked in the health service for over two decades.
As part of his HSE contract, Mr Magee — who is widely believed to have been given the CEO job after the hotly-tipped cancer service reform chief, Prof Tom Keane, declined the role — received an annual no-bonus salary of €322,000 until 2015, almost €100,000 more than the €228,466 ceiling outlined.
The senior official’s departure means almost all health service management connected to the Mary Harney era — the HSE board (disbanded in March 2011), VHI (CEO Jimmy Tolan and chairman Bernard Collins left in May 2011 and June 2012), and Department of Health (secretary general Michael Scanlan retired earlier this year) — have left the system.
Speaking on RTÉ Radio yesterday, Mr Magee said the 2004 setting up of the HSE “was a very significant and radical move, and probably the pendulum is swinging back now”.
