Irish Examiner View: Hard to see Robert Watt's grounds for arrogance

It is hard to believe that someone in charge of the Department of Health would offer “it slipped our minds” as a credible explanation for any omission.

Secretary general of the Department of Health, Robert Watt, arriving at Leinster House. Picture: Gareth Chaney/Collins Photos

Robert Watt, secretary general of the Department of Health, attended the Oireachtas finance committee this week.

This is par for the course for secretaries general, who are often asked to clarify matters for TDs and senators — but Mr Watt’s performance was described by committee chairman John McGuinness as “arrogantly dismissive”, one of the more candid descriptions of a senior civil servant to be found in the records of Leinster House.

Mr Watt was on hand to discuss the independent report by Maura Quinn into the proposed secondment of former chief medical officer Tony Holohan to Trinity College Dublin. Mr Watt said he rejected most of the findings of the report, but it’s very difficult to see why.

For instance, it emerged that Dr Holohan had been in touch with TCD to arrange some matters, and Quinn’s report stated, reasonably enough, that no individual should be personally and exclusively involved in any other negotiations with third parties which involves the disbursement of State funds in which they have a potential personal interest.

Why would the secretary general of a Government department reject such a common-sense recommendation?

The grounds for Mr Watt’s “arrogance” are hard to make out with the naked eye, given the ongoing problems at all levels of the health service he heads. 

Even in his own evidence to the committee this week, he acknowledged that the minister for health had not been informed about the funding aspect of the proposed secondment because his computer had been hacked, and then the matter “slipped our minds”.

It is hard to believe that someone in charge of the Department of Health would offer this as a credible explanation for any omission, let alone one related to so sensitive a topic as the secondment under discussion. As an excuse, it would surely be unacceptable in any context or at any level within the Department of Health.

Mr Watt’s belief that this was an acceptable answer is a better illustration of that “dismissive arrogance” than anything else — and a striking insight into the mindset of one of the most influential mandarins at the top of the ‘permanent government’.