ALMOST €800,000 from a local authority partnership body was paid into the bank account operated by Siptu officials that is at the centre of the Skill training scheme controversy.
Paul McSweeney, the chief executive of the Local Government Management Services Board, confirmed last night that €790,000 had been paid to the account over a 10-year period through a partnership body known as Lantac.
He said the money had been provided for partnership training for Siptu shop stewards and for general operatives in the local authority area.
Mr McSweeney said that some of the funding had been paid on foot of applications from Siptu, which were assessed by the Lantac trustees. In other cases, the Department of the Environment had provided money for distribution for partnership training.
Informed sources said last night that about €100,000 of the money paid into the account had been provided from the Department of the Environment over the period.
This brings the amount of funding from various State sources paid into the Siptu national health and local authority levy fund account to more than €4 million.
The trade union Siptu has said that it knew nothing about this account.
The Dáil public accounts committee was told by the HSE yesterday that the account was controlled by Siptu representatives Matt Merrigan and Jack Kelly.
It has already emerged that more than €2 million in grant payments from the Department of Health and over €300,000 in controversial expense reimbursements were paid into this account as part of the Skill programme.
Separately €925,000 was paid into the account by the Health Service Partnership Forum.
Speaking at the committee hearing, Fine Gael TD Jim O’Keeffe described the payments made into the account from the health sector as creating “a slush fund”.
The Health Service Executive has contended that some of the money paid into the account had been used to pay for some of the 31 controversial foreign trips undertaken by civil servants, HSE staff and trade union leaders. These included visits to Australia, the US, Hong Kong and the UK.
Yesterday the HSE provided the first details of the identities of those who went on the trips.
The former general secretary of Impact, Peter McLoone, the current deputy general secretary of the union, Kevin Callinan, and Peter Bunting of the Irish Congress of Trade Unions, are among those listed as having travelled on trips paid for by the fund.
It also emerged that a senior official of Dublin City Council, Frank Kelly, also took part in one of the trips. The HSE list said that Alan Smith, who ran the Skill programme, went on 22 trips.