Seanad: The outgoing secretary general of the Department of Health, Michael Kelly, would probably not speak out on the conflict of opinion between himself and Micheál Martin, "on the basis that he has got a new job with €168,000 a year as the chairman of the Higher Education Authority," Michael Finucane (FG) said.
Speaking on the Travers report into the handling of the nursing home charges issue, Mr Finucane said there was a conflict of opinion on two occasions when Mr Kelly said he had informed the minister. It was not possible to assess who was telling the truth, because somebody was not telling the truth in that situation.
The present chairman of the HEA was due to retire and it had been intended that the post would be part-time in future. But "the Government had to find a niche for Mr Kelly, because if Mr Kelly was out there without an appointment, Mr Kelly could probably tell a lot more things in relation to this issue."
Mr Martin had a lot of experience and he had been regarded as a future taoiseach in some sections of the media. Annual reports by the Ombudsman had referred to the charges issue and a Sunday newspaper had given it considerable publicity in January 2001. Spin doctors were available to inform the Minister of publicity affecting his brief. "So I would refute entirely that the Minister did not know what was happening on the legal interpretation that these charges were invalid," Mr Finucane said.
Brendan Ryan (Lab) said he was genuinely flabbergasted at the recommendations in the report. He had expected to see serious proposals.
"Instead, I found almost schoolboy or schoolgirl ideas so self-evidently true that it is astonishing they wouldn't already be in place."
Mary O'Rourke, leader of the House, said it remained a mystery as to why various secretaries general of the department had not attended to the charges issue with alacrity.