Opposition says criticisms of Martin censored

Fine Gael and Labour have claimed that former minister for health Micheál Martin failed to meet requirements set out in legislation governing public administration in his handling of the nursing home charges controversy.

The Opposition parties also said yesterday that Government members of the Oireachtas Committee on Health had voted to censor these and other criticisms of Mr Martin's tenure in the Department of Health in its report on the illegal long-stay charges which is to be published today.

The parties yesterday published 12 submissions on the nursing home charge issue which they claim have been excluded from the final report of the committee.

The Irish Times reported last Friday that the report will maintain it had been impossible to reach a "shared agreement on how responsibility should be apportioned between ministers and civil servants" over the illegal charges.

The report was voted on by the committee last Thursday after seven weeks of hearings in which senior politicians, civil servants and health service chiefs gave evidence.

In their submissions to the report, which were voted down by the Government members, Fine Gael and Labour claim that Mr Martin failed to accept the provisions of the Public Service Management Act under which he was responsible for the performance of functions assigned to his department.

The Opposition parties also claim that the Minister's special advisers failed to perform their functions as set out in the same legislation. They also argued that there was confusion surrounding the roles of Ministers of State within the Department of Health.

Fine Gael health spokesman Dr Liam Twomey said the Opposition had tried to work by consensus within the committee, but the Government members would not accept the inclusions of anything negative or critical even as appendices to the final report.

"Two votes were taken, and it was clear that the Government majority intended to ride roughshod over any Opposition attempts to assign political responsibility for the failure to deal with the illegal charges."

Labour Party spokeswoman on health Liz McManus said the Government wanted only "a sanitised version of the truth" to be contained in the report. She said the Government members of the committee had sought to railroad through their own views so that "the central issue of political responsibility" for the illegal nursing home charges would not be addressed.

The chairman of the committee, John Maloney of Fianna Fáil, said some members of the Opposition had come to the hearings with the intention of "getting Micheál Martin's head", and they were disappointed when they did not get their way.

He said the role of the committee was to examine the Travers report into the controversy and recommend procedures so the problem would never be repeated. Some members of the Opposition "had failed to catch on to this requirement".

Opposition submissions: what they claim

In their submissions to the Oireachtas Committee on Health, Fine Gael and Labour have criticised former minister for health Micheál Martin, his Ministers of State and his special advisers over their roles in the illegal nursing home charges controversy.

They maintained:

Mr Martin failed to accept responsibility for the performance of functions in his department as set in legislation governing public administration;

Mr Martin had not ensured that appropriate strategies and systems were in place and operational to enable the department to meet its goals and objectives as demanded by both the Public Service Management Act and guidelines issued by the Taoiseach;

A Department of Health memo, issued in March 2000 on the instruction of Mr Martin, "created an inappropriate process for informing the then minister on significant issues and developments";

That based on this memo the special advisers to the former minister had failed in the performance of their functions as set out in the Public Service Management Act;

That confusion in the Department of Health with regard to the roles of Ministers of State led to a failure at ministerial level to take appropriate action on the issue of illegal long-stay charges;

That the introduction by the Government of medical cards for everyone over 70 regardless of means did not receive the necessary analytical input, and reflected a failure of governance at Cabinet level.