Watt should have engaged earlier over plan surrounding Holohan TCD move, committee told

Robert Watt should have engaged earlier with the Department of Public Expenditure (DPER) over his decision to guarantee €2 million annually in research funding as part of Dr Tony Holohan’s secondment to Trinity College Dublin (TCD), an Oireachtas committee was told.

David Moloney, secretary general of DPER, said it had never got a proposal from the Department of Health around the financing of Dr Holohan’s secondment.

Mr Watt, the secretary general of the Department of Health, offered the multimillion research funding to TCD as part of a secondment agreement for Dr Holohan who was to resign his role as Chief Medical Officer (CMO) to become a professor of public health.

His existing salary was to be paid by the Department of Health and the research funding would be worth up to €20 million if the CMO had stayed in the new role until retirement age. Dr Holohan decided not to take up the role after the controversy erupted.

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Answering a series of questions at the Joint Oireachtas Committee on Finance on Wednesday, Mr Moloney said the first time the Department became aware of the planned secondment was when it got a request for a sanction to replace Dr Holohan as CMO on March 31st, 2022.

Committee chairman John McGuinness (Fianna Fáil) asked was it fair to say Mr Moloney knew nothing about the financial arrangements before the request for sanction.

“Yes, that’s correct,” said Mr Moloney.

‘Suitable jobs’

Referring to the commitment given by Mr Watt to provide €2 million in funding for research each year, he said: “No proposal was made to me in relation to the other financial attachments. What I would have expected was early engagement with me as to any funding consequences.”

Asked specifically by Mr McGuinness about the research funding, he added: “The lack of engagement on the funding characteristics is the issue that we begun to follow as we became aware.”

He said that, normally, funding issues like that would not be linked to a secondment. Two other former high-ranking civil servants, former secretaries general Seán Ó Foghlú of Education, and Dr Fergal Lynch, from the Department of Children, have respectively been seconded to Maynooth University, and NUI Galway until their retirement ages.

While their salaries will be borne by their former departments, there were no other substantial financial arrangements attached to their moves, Mr Moloney confirmed.

The secondments of Mr Ó Foghlú and Dr Lynch came about because both had finished their maximum terms as secretary general but neither had reached retirement age.

Mr Moloney said on completion of their terms, secretaries general have a right to be offered an alternative position in the public service, or an International institution, at a salary equivalent to secretary general until preserved pension age. He told the committee that, before 2011, a secretary general was entitled to retire with a full pension once their term had come to an end, even if they had not reached retirement age.

Mairéad Farrell of Sinn Féin pointed to the roles of Mr O Foghlú and Dr Lynch being very similar and said it was not readily apparent or transparent to the public what they were actually doing and the value their roles would bring.

Mr Moloney said they had a mix of roles within their respective institutions. In addition to that they were involved in building stronger partnerships between universities and the public service.

On the issue of trying to accommodate secretaries general who had reached the end of their terms but were too young to retire, Jim O’Callaghan (Fianna Fáil) said: “The impression that I get as a TD is that suitable jobs are being looked for as a fit for these people.”