Highly paid ministerial advisers capable of ‘exceptional’ lapses

THERE are not too many bosses who would pay the staff more than themselves, but then Taoiseach Bertie Ahern is a rare one. In more senses than one.

And his programme manager, Gerry Hickey, is a lucky man. At almost €200,000 a year - €192,784, to be precise - he’s on a bigger salary than his boss.

What’s more, he’s literally a man in a hundred because he’s also the highest paid of the other 99 advisers the Government will pay €6 million from taxpayers’ money this year.

Rather than begrudge the 15 members of the Government a mere 100 advisers on top dollar, we should be grateful that Bertie Ahern deemed they would get along with so few.

In defending the outlay of €6 million this year to this circle, he pointed out that there were twice that many employed by the Rainbow Coalition when they were in power.

With a commendable sense of proportion, Bertie trimmed the numbers.

You and I might be inclined to think that these 100 top earners from the public purse are there solely as spindoctors for their political masters, but the Taoiseach assures us they are not.

Instead, many dealt with issues and had no contact with the media.

Indeed, from the evidence at the Oireachtas Health Committee, which is looking into the nursing home scandal, or the Travers report if you prefer, some appear not to have too much contact with their ministers.

Take Christy Mannion, who is paid €82,193, and Deirdre Gillane, who is paid €81,431, by the taxpayers, for giving advice to Micheál Martin, Minister for Enterprise and Employment.

They were also whispering in his ear when he was Minister for Health, so obviously he valued their advice.

As we all know now, the issue of illegally charging public patients in nursing homes hit the fan after Micheál Martin handed over all those trolleys to Tánaiste Mary Harney when she swapped portfolios with him in last September’s cabinet re-shuffle. Well, she didn’t so much swap as demand that she get Health. Strangely enough, Micheál Martin was surprised, even amazed, when he learned, as we all did, that as many as 300,000 people were illegally charged for nursing home care since 1976, even though they had medical cards, and this little oversight could cost taxpayers anything up to £2 billion.

Last month Micheál Martin, in a special Dáil session on the Travers report, insisted he did not know about it until late last year. Despite the fact that he was Minister for Health, he said he had not seen a file flagging the problem in December 2003. You might be inclined to say that he had very well-paid advisers who might have spotted this little matter and mentioned it to him. You would be half right - he had but they didn’t.

Special adviser Christy Mannion, now on €82,193, and policy adviser Deirdre Gillane, now on €81,431, gave rather intriguing evidence this week to the Oireachtas Health Committee.

They both admitted they had not read a crucial legal opinion on the illegal nursing home charges. This was an eight-page summary of the legal advice given to the South Eastern Health Board prior to a meeting in the Gresham Hotel in December 2003.

Now they were both probably busy people at the time, but it wasn’t just unfortunate that they didn’t take time out to even glance at the eight pages.

Christy Mannion had a better description for it. He admitted it was “exceptional”. The two of them also admitted they had not heard about the issue of the charges before that meeting in the Gresham, and they did not raise it with the minister afterwards.

APPARENTLY, at the meeting it was decided to seek the opinion of the Attorney General about the matter, and the two believed that was the correct decision. A kind of a seanachaí approach, so to speak: “Things rested so.”

They believed it would surface again when the AG had delivered his opinion.

At least they got that right.

Incredibly, Mr Mannion further admitted he only bothered to read the legal opinion when the whole matter was exposed after Mary Harney took over Health - the best part of a year later.

And wasn’t Micheál Martin unlucky - or lucky?

The December 2003 meeting of health board chief executives and senior Department of Health officials in the Gresham went on for three and a half hours, and was attended by Mícheál Martin.

Except for the ten minutes he missed.

And what was raised during those ten minutes? What else - but the likelihood that the nursing home charges were illegal, as per the legal opinion.

But even though Mr Mannion and Ms Gillane had not read it, I presume there was nothing wrong with their hearing, and the implications must have dawned on them.

Whether they did or not, it never dawned on them to brief the minister, then or subsequently. So, he could legitimately claim he did not know until late last year. Extraordinary, or “exceptional”, to quote the highly paid special adviser.

Not so extraordinary is the reason why there are so many ramshackle schools around the country and why thousands of young people face the prospect of spending all their schooldays in prefabs.

The Government has spent an incredible €73.5 million in the past five years on prefabs, instead of proper classrooms with roofs that don’t cave in.

Not alone did Education Minister Mary Hanafin admit it, but she defended it in the Dáil by saying the money only represented less than 5% of the total expenditure on school buildings between 2000 and 2004.

Obviously good on prefab quality control, she told the Dáil: “A number of them have a very long lifespan and are of very good quality. In many instances, one would not recognise that the new ones are not a permanent solution.”

How many there are in the “number” of good quality ones Ms Hanafin did not enlarge upon, but at the end of the day they are prefabs disguised as classrooms.

Prefabs were always understood, in the normal sense of the word, to be a temporary measure, but having spent a colossal €73.5 million on them in the last five years, you can take it that this Government intends that they last a long time.

If you’re in the prefab business the future looks good because, according to the Central Statistics Office the number of births will continue to grow up to 2011, which means there will be a substantial increase in the school-going population.