FUNDING:BEAUMONT HOSPITAL in Dublin paid Siptu €100,000 to arrange a two-week secondment for nurses in New York.
The union’s trustees’ report on the controversial bank account operated by Matt Merrigan and Jack Kelly shows that it received a lodgement of €100,000 from Beaumont.
Mr Merrigan had been on the board of the hospital for many years.
Other funding paid into the account from the Department of Health, the HSE and a local authority partnership body had previously been known.
However, this was the first time the Beaumont lodgement had been revealed.
Beaumont said last night it had paid €100,000 to Siptu for arranging the logistics surrounding the secondment in New York.
It said it subsequently received the money back from the HSE partnership forum.
Beaumont said that eight of its ward sisters, as well as eight more from St James’s Hospital, had spent two weeks on secondment in two hospitals in New York in 2008.
It said the initiative was part of a project aimed at expanding their skill sets.
It said the directors of nursing at Beaumont and St James had travelled to New York to carry out a review at the end of the secondment.
Beaumont said it had been asked for €100,000 in advance and had paid this to the union.
It said Mr Merrigan made all the arrangements and the money was subsequently recouped from a health service partnership fund.
The HSE said last night that it welcomed the publication of the Siptu report.
“Today’s report is an important stage in understanding better the governance and management of the programme so that breaches that occurred cannot arise again,” it said.
“The HSE has already publicly acknowledged in our submissions to the [Dáil] public accounts committee financial control, governance and oversight deficiencies on our part.”
The Department of Health said that following the Siptu report, it would now work with the HSE on producing a joint analysis on the Skill programme and partnership programme in the HSE.
Mr Merrigan, in a statement issued last night, said that a forensic analysis of the account, carried out by Grant Thornton, had found that all transactions had been properly accounted for and that there were no monies that were unaccounted for or absent from the analysis.
