Health official apologises to Dáil committee for 'loopers' jibe

Robert Watt also said: “I do not believe that it is helpful or in the public interest to have covertly obtained transcripts of private conversations between officials put into the public domain."

In response to the "loopers" jibe from a senior Department of Health official, Sinn Féin TD and Chair of the Public Accounts Committee Brian Stanley said: "If those quotations are accurate and if that is the Department of Health's attitude towards this committee, that is a disgrace”. File photo: Gareth Chaney/Collins

A senior official at the Department of Health has apologised for describing members of the Dáil Public Accounts Committee (PAC) as “loopers”.

A letter from the secretary general of the department, Robert Watt, to the PAC states that the official in question, the head of the Department’s finance unit John O’Grady, “sincerely regrets” his use of “inappropriate language in relation to the members of the Committee”.