'Mind-blowing' delay for new Cork hospital as crucial documents not delivered for eight months

The business case for the new hospital was delivered to the Department of Health in January but not passed on to the Department of Public Expenditure until September

Fine Gael TD for Cork North Central Colm Burke declared as 'mind-blowing' the fact a decision on Cork’s elective hospital will not now be made before November. Picture: Gareth Chaney/Collins 

Crucial documents needed for the development of a new elective hospital in Cork were delayed by eight months, it has emerged.

The Department of Health came in for stinging criticism at the Public Accounts Committee (PAC) after the news was confirmed.

Fine Gael TD for Cork North Central Colm Burke declared as “mind-blowing” the fact a decision on Cork’s elective hospital will not now be made before November at the earliest.

Appearing before the committee, David Moloney, the secretary-general of the Department of Public Expenditure and Reform, said a preliminary business case for the new hospital for his department’s consideration regarding its sign-off was only received in late September.

Those documents were first delivered to the Department of Health by the HSE in January of this year. It is unclear why it took so long for the documents to be transferred on to DPER.

The Department of Health said that over the second half of this year "the project level business cases for elective care centres in Cork and Galway have been subject to internal review by the Department of Health, including by the Departmental Irish Government Economic and Evaluation Service”.

It added that in September an External Assurance Process (EAP) review was completed.

“Completion of the EAP enabled the business cases to be submitted to the Department of Public Expenditure and Reform and the major projects advisory group."

Last month, on September 28, one day after the Department of Health delivered the documents to DPER, its secretary-general Robert Watt told the Oireachtas health committee he expected a decision to be handed down in mid-October.

Building public elective hospitals in Cork, Galway, and Dublin has been under discussion within Government as part of plans to tackle long delays for patients.

However, such a decision would have been an impossibility, Mr Moloney told the PAC, as there is a six to eight-week timeframe for all such business cases to be considered by the major projects advisory group within DPER.

“I was told we’d have a decision in October. Previously the Department of Health had said it would be late June or early July,” Mr Burke told the Irish Examiner.

“Today was the first I heard about the delay in getting the documents across. I don’t understand why I was told a decision was about to be made when it couldn’t have been. 

This delay is not acceptable. It will be at least four years before this hospital is even built. I intend to follow up on this.

The Cork TD added “it goes to show that you have to keep after Government departments if you want to get anything done”.

Building public elective hospitals in Cork, Galway, and Dublin has been under discussion within Government as part of plans to tackle long delays for patients, notably at Cork University Hospital.

Salaries of secretaries-general

Separately, the committee heard that DPER is currently considering legal advice from the attorney general regarding the legal soundness of publishing details of the salaries of secretaries-general.

This issue had arisen in January of this year after it emerged that Mr Watt in his new role as head of the Department of Health had been claiming an €81,000 pay rise to his salary despite previously claiming he would waive the rise until such time as “the economy begins to recover”.

DPER told the committee that publishing the actual remuneration of a secretary-general “might stray into issues of personal information, as well as matters related to tax legislation”.

Advice from the attorney general regarding the matter was finally received on September 27, DPER said, some eight months after the matter was first raised at PAC.

“The department is considering this advice at present,” it said.

Publishing the remuneration of a secretary-general has not hitherto been the norm within departmental accounts, despite the pay packages of CEOs of State bodies being routinely published on an annual basis.

Mr Watt’s controversial move from the DPER to the Department of Health in April 2021 saw him attain a salary €81,000 in excess of other secretaries-general. 

The manner of the appointment was subsequently subject to a highly critical report into the matter by the joint committee on finance, which declared Mr Watt had behaved with “an utter disregard” for transparency.