Former CHI chief kept €177k salary after taking up new role 

CHI faces public scrutiny after settling with ex-CEO — Eilish Hardiman — to retain her €177k salary and losing €250k in claims.

Children's Health Ireland's Eilish Hardiman. File picture: Brian Lawless/PA Wire

Children’s Health Ireland (CHI), the body which manages the country’s children’s hospitals, came to a "settlement" with its former CEO for her to keep her €177,000 salary when taking over a new strategic role.

The Public Accounts Committee (PAC) heard on Thursday that Eilish Hardiman continues to be paid her salary in her new role as strategic programme director at CHI after former health minister Stephen Donnelly declined to approve her retention for a third term as chief executive.

Ms Hardiman, who had led CHI since its inception in 2008, left her post officially in April 2024 to take up her new role. She had been on medical leave since the previous November, meaning the CEO’s role remained vacant until January of this year when Lucy Nugent took over the post.

It was previously reported that the HSE had suppressed the recruitment of a senior manager in order to compensate for the establishment of Ms Hardiman’s new role.

Comptroller and Auditor General Seamus McCarthy, who is responsible for audits and reports on the use of public funds, said that CHI had been “reluctant” to divulge the nature of the settlement with Ms Hardiman, and even its very existence. 

He noted that typically such a settlement will have a non-disclosure agreement attached, “it’s really for CHI to provide what further information they can”.

“I have further information but it’s not for me to divulge it,” Mr McCarthy said.

CHI will be the first entity to appear before the new PAC on Thursday, May 22.

CHI lost out on €250,000 in insurance compensation

The committee further heard that CHI had lost out on €250,000 in insurance compensation after failing to file claims with insurers during the allotted timeframe in 2023.

Mr McCarthy said that the claims for the €250,000 had been submitted and “were either rejected or expected to be rejected” in that the claim forms “were not submitted or addressed within the underlying timeframe in corrspondence with agreements”.

Fine Gael TD James Geoghegan, a new member on the committee, described the situation regarding the expired claims as “shocking”, saying that “in the real world to have €0.25m evaporated is really demoralising”.