Department of Health struggled to spend €800m of its budget allowance, whistleblower claims

Department employee's latest disclosure focuses on meetings around Budget 2021, which saw an extra €4bn added to the health budget

The Department of Health said that Mr Donnelly is 'head of his department, and any suggestions that he was in any way removed from or not involved in issues relevant to his department are simply untrue'. Picture: PA

The Department of Health struggled to work out how to spend €800m just a week after being given the largest budget in its history, a whistleblower has claimed.

The whistleblower, a Department of Health employee, has prepared a seventh disclosure for release, focusing on meetings in and around Budget 2021, which saw an extra €4bn added to the health budget, the largest budget increase in the history of the State.

However, the disclosure, seen by the Irish Examiner, said that just over a week after the budget was voted through by the Dáil, health officials did not know how to spend €800m.

The document says that on October 14, 2020, Health Minister Stephen Donnelly briefed the finance unit in the department on the upcoming budget.

It says Mr Donnelly said that "for the first time" the department had adequate funding to do what it set out to do but said not everything would work and that the department would "adjust as it needs to".

The disclosure says one official told a finance unit meeting eight days later that "every single person that we spoke to expressed concern that the HSE wouldn't spend money on what it was for, and would end up in the black hole".

Another is quoted as saying the department did not trust the HSE and would instead give the executive one-third of its funding.

A third meeting in December focused on talks around a new public health consultant contract in which an official noted Mr Donnelly and his advisers "had been inundated with submissions, and letters, and position papers" and that "sometimes things are being signed off by [Mr Donnelly's] advisers".

The whistleblower claims the meeting was told "to make damn sure" that the minister had signed off on sensitive issues himself.

In his conclusion, the whistleblower says it "seemed from the budget briefing that the minister knew that some parts of the budget wouldn’t work, and might have to be adjusted".

Eight days after the Dáil voted for the budget, the finance unit [Department of Health] was struggling to identify how an €800m chunk could be used.

"As a civil servant, I have to assess whether the Government is being side-lined from important decision-making and whether Dáil deputies have a full and transparent view of the out-workings of enormous budgets that they vote to fund. 

"Evidence from the three meetings suggested that this may not be the case."

The whistleblower says the content of the three meetings were chief "amongst many other matters that informed my decision to alert the secretary-general and the minister, that something might be amiss".

He goes on to take responsibility for leaking tapes of department meetings to the Business Post newspaper.

In a statement, the Department of Health said Mr Donnelly was "head of his department, and any suggestions that he was in any way removed from or not involved in issues relevant to his department are simply untrue".

"Suggestions that the minister’s advisers kept issues from him have no basis in fact. 

Not every single issue is raised directly with the minister as it is the job of his advisers to ensure that the most urgent and time-sensitive issues reach him at the appropriate time.

The statement says the claims made in notes about meetings are the recollections of one person and that no official of the Department of Health had given consent to be recorded while carrying out their duties as part of the deliberative process.

"Publishing details of meetings between government officials in the ordinary course of their work, which were recorded without the consent or knowledge of participants, is a direct violation of individual privacy.

"The department strongly believes that quoting the casual comments of individuals only serves to limit constructive debate and dialogue across the civil service and this is damaging to the public interest."

The HSE said in a statement that it was an organisation with a budget of more than €20bn and that the €812m in cash held at the end of 2020 represents "about 14 days holding of cash".