Robert Watt and Tony Holohan to attend Oireachtas committee

A statement from the Department of Health this evening said Stephen Donnelly will attend when an independent review has been completed.

Robert Watt has previously declined to attend the finance committee as chairman John McGuinness said there had been a 'determined effort by Government' to obfuscate around the botched secondment of Tony Holohan to TCD. Picture: Sam Boal/RollingNews

Both Robert Watt and Dr Tony Holohan will appear at an Oireachtas Committee next week.

The two men will attend the Oireachtas Health Committee to answer questions on Dr Holohan's abandoned secondment to Trinity College Dublin.

The Health Committee wrote to the two and Health Minister Stephen Donnelly last night to invite them to answer questions next Wednesday.

Mr Watt had written to the committee last night to decline an invite to discuss the secondment of Tony Holohan to Trinity College Dublin, telling the committee that it is “not in the public interest” for him to be asked to account for the abandoned move at multiple Oireachtas committees.

He also asked the committee to refrain from “unnecessary and distracting commentary”.

This led to the Sinn Féin members of the committee — Mairéad Farrell and Pearse Doherty — to ask the committee’s chair John McGuinness to write to the Oireachtas committee on parliamentary privileges and oversight seeking the power to compel witnesses.

Meanwhile, a statement from the Department of Health this evening said Mr Donnelly will attend when an independent review has been completed.

"The Secretary General of the Department of Health and the Chief Medical Officer will attend the Oireachtas Health Committee next Wednesday. Minister Donnelly has commissioned an independent external review.

"As the Minister has already stated, he is happy to attend Committee when he receives the independent report he commissioned in a few weeks’ time."

Secondment 'flies in the face' of guidance

Speaking at the committee today, when Martin Fraser, the secretary general of the Department of Taoiseach, was appearing to discuss the secondment, Mr Doherty said it was the first time in a decade he has sought compellability in the Oireachtas.

At the committee, chairman John McGuinness told Mr Fraser that a permanent secondment “flies in the face” of official guidance from the Department of Public Expenditure. The Carlow-Kilkenny Fianna Fáil TD told the committee that there had been a “determined effort by Government” to obfuscate around the appointment and that this had made his job “difficult”.

He said there is “no appetite of Government” to find out the details of the secondment.

“This is not personal,” Mr McGuinness said: 

I just have to do my job as chairman, and it has been made seriously difficult by the attitude of Government ministers, the Taoiseach, and senior civil servants.

“I find that it is a shocking state of affairs that this committee has to sit like this and work its way through nonsense and through all of the misinformation and spin in order to try to get to the truth,” he said.