Dept of Health whistleblower denies accusations he 'broke in' to meetings

Shane Corr, a senior civil servant within the department’s finance unit who came to prominence earlier this year after leaking the recordings, wrote to the Department’s HR function demanding an investigation under its Dignity at Work policy. File picture: RTÉ Investigates/RTÉ

A whistleblower at the Department of Health has made an official complaint over accusations that he ‘broke in’ to a number of internal online meetings before recording them.

Shane Corr, a senior civil servant within the department’s finance unit who came to prominence earlier this year after leaking the recordings, wrote to the Department’s HR function demanding an investigation under its Dignity at Work policy.

Mr Corr, who has been suspended from his duties on full pay pending an investigation into his actions, wrote to the HR department in early April saying that he was of the impression that allegations had been made against him from within the department to the effect that he was a “conspiracy theorist”; that he had “doctored” the recordings he had leaked; and that he had “broke in” to, or hacked, his way into the online departmental meetings from which the recordings were sourced.

He backed up his complaint using testimony from journalists from the Business Post newspaper, in which a number of the recordings had featured, stating that the idea Mr Corr had “broken into” the meetings was contradicted by the fact that in each recording he had been “greeted by his colleagues or contributed to the meetings directly”.

A statement given to Mr Corr by the Business Post said, to that effect, that when it was pointed out to the department’s officials that Mr Corr had actively participated in the meetings “the official claimed that one unspecified meeting was broken into”.

They added that claims Mr Corr had “doctored” the recordings appeared to have emanated “from senior officials in the Department or were constructed by the press office”, as “no one in attendance at any of the meetings suggested to us that the meetings were doctored or broken into”.

When questioned about the claims, a spokesperson said the Department of Health “does not comment on HR matters relating to individual employees".