THE STATE’S two top health service administrators have clashed over who was responsible for the operation of a controversial €60 million staff training scheme and the payment of more than €2.3 million to the trade union Siptu.
The secretary general of the Department of Health, Michael Scanlan, wrote to the chief executive of the Health and Safety Executive, Prof Brendan Drumm, to say internal audit findings suggested “there were fundamental weaknesses within the HSE and the governance, accountability and control of the Skill programme”.
He said proposed governance arrangements drawn up in 2005 by the Skill steering group “had not been implemented by the HSE . . . Moreover, the audit report’s identification of opinion regarding the line management and supervision of Skill has similarities with the findings of some other reviews within the HSE”.
However, Prof Drumm countered in a replying letter that Mr Scanlan had been “very selective” in quoting from the internal audit report.
The HSE yesterday made a formal complaint to the Garda and said public money could not be accounted for. Siptu said it never received the money but one of the signatories to the account into which the money is believed to have been paid was a staff member.
Prof Drumm said the Department of Health and the Department of Finance, as well as his own organisation, had issues to address arising from the findings of an internal audit. The internal audit into the Skill programme and the payment to Siptu, which was initiated last year by the HSE’s national director of human resources Seán McGrath, found there had been 31 foreign trips undertaken by civil servants, health service staff and trade union representatives, including visits to the US, Australia, Hong Kong and Britain.
In his confidential letter to Prof Drumm sent on Wednesday, Mr Scanlan said that the decision to make the controversial payment to Siptu “was based on the recognised need at that time to try to improve what had been a very difficult and adverse industrial relations environment in the health sector”.
Mr Scanlan said that study visits to other health systems “would be among the activities comprehended” in the headings authorising the money paid to Siptu.
However, in a replying letter last night, Prof Drumm told Mr Scanlan that he was not aware of any business case which had been provided to support the establishment of the fund to Siptu “or indeed any justification for increasing the payment to €250,000 per annum”.
“Our internal audit, I am informed, has not been able to find any detailed information as to the reasons these funds were being paid to the trade union,” he said.