COMMITTEE OF PUBLIC ACCOUNTS debate -
Friday, 20 Dec 2013

Business of Committee

Chairman

This is a special meeting to deal with NAMA and the Department of Finance. Deputy Deasy will be the lead speaker, followed by Deputy O'Donnell, and members can contribute and ask questions afterwards.

Before we call the witnesses, I advise the committee that I made contact with St. Vincent's Hospital, which has agreed to send representatives before the committee. I suggest that we invite witnesses from St. Vincent's before our first meeting of the new year on Thursday, 16 January, if the date suits. We will start the meeting at 10 a.m., take the first witness at 10.30 a.m. and immediately after that, depending on how long it takes - perhaps one hour or one and half hours - we will take witnesses from St. Vincent's. If members agree, we will investigate whether we can make an arrangement with St. Vincent's and whether the date suits. We will inform members thereafter.

Deputy Simon Harris

I thank the Chairman and the committee secretariat for the proactive way in which they pursued this issue. St. Vincent's has not made it easy to do so. The letter we received from the hospital yesterday borders on a waste of paper in that it refused to provide us with any of the information we sought which was not already in the public domain. Two key questions emerged for me during the course of the meeting yesterday.

One related to the issue of a top up and whether they are in compliance with the Department of Public Expenditure and Reform's pay guidelines and the HSE's pay policy. St. Vincent's continues to be the only section 38 organisation in the country that will not divulge the level of private top up it pays its chief executive and two other managers. That is not acceptable. It had a chance to clear it up yesterday. It made us wait all day for this famous letter but when the letter came it did not refer to the issue.

The more serious issue, which was discussed at length here yesterday and which St. Vincent's completely ignored, although I am sure it was monitoring proceedings closely, is whether it is acceptable that the HSE pays a public salary to an individual to run a public hospital on a full-time basis while that official is double jobbing as head of the St. Vincent's Healthcare Group, which includes the private hospital. Who is looking out for the taxpayer and how can a person keep switching hats when he goes into board meetings representing the public interest and the commercial interest of the St. Vincent's Healthcare Group? Perhaps over the Christmas period and before the representatives of St. Vincent's come here on 16 January they can reflect on those matters in an effort to be constructive.

Chairman

I contacted St. Vincent's on foot of the lack of content in the letter and regarding the issues we were trying to address yesterday. Arising from that, and bearing in mind what Deputy Harris just said, the St. Vincent's representatives have agreed to come in. We are suggesting 16 January, the same day as Mr. Conlon. We will proceed from there. They may submit papers to the committee. I will ask the clerk to contact Mr. Jermyn and sort out the details. We invite the witnesses to attend.