Minutes of meeting which Minister attended in December 2003 describe need for 'definitive legal assessment' Nursing home charges were an issue in Hawkins House at least 18 months ago, writes Carl O'Brien.
When the Tánaiste stood up in the Dáil yesterday to speak about the nursing home charges fiasco, she insisted she was not interested in embarking on a blame-hunting exercise.
"I am not interested in blame. I am interested only in achieving excellence in public administration, in the interests of patients, public and staff," she said.
However, leafing through the series of official documents released by Ms Harney yesterday in order to throw light on the background to the current controversy, it is hard to escape one name leaping out from a crucial piece of paper: "Minister M. Martin".
While the retired head of Forfás, Mr John Travers, is to examine the management of the issue, there are already signs that alarm bells were ringing loudly in Hawkins House on the nursing home charges issue at least a year and a half ago during Mr Martin's stewardship of the Department.
The Department received legal advice commissioned by the South Eastern Health Board as early as March 2003 that the practice of charging medical card holders may have been legally unsafe.
The board ceased charging two nursing home residents on foot of complaints they made through the Ombudsman's office, while thousands of others continued to be charged.
Mr Martin insists he was unaware of the detail of this advice. But the minutes of a meeting between him, his junior ministers and the chief executives of health boards held on December 16th, 2003, appear to contradict elements of Mr Martin's explanation.
"It was brought to the attention of the group that the Ombudsman has challenged a health board's interpretation of how persons over 70 should be charged for long stay care in health board institutions," the minutes state.
"The varying views of different legal advisers were noted in the context of the legislation clarifying the existing eligibility framework ... It would be necessary to get a definitive legal assessment of the present arrangement as a first step."
All the signs are that it took almost a year later before Mr Martin's successor, Ms Harney, sought this definitive legal advice from the Attorney General.
The AG's office warned that the practice may be legally unsound.
Key questions have yet to be adequately answered over why this legal advice was allowed gather dust while 20,000 medical card holders continued to have their pensions deducted to pay for their nursing home care.
Mr Martin's flustered insistence on RTÉ's Six-One News yesterday that he arrived late at the December meeting and was not aware of the legal advice left even more questions unanswered.
While he may not have been aware of the specific legal advice, it is clear he was aware that there was an issue which needed to be urgently addressed.
Mr Martin was right when he said the issue has passed through the hands of successive ministers for health during the 70s, 80s and 90s without anything being done to address it.
He told RTÉ: "It's only since the Attorney General made his comments that it has materialised that there was a very unsound legal basis for the last 50 years, in which every political party was involved in ... it's been accepted policy and practice, no one said anything about it for 50 years and I'm not going to take the crap for what went on for 50 years..."
However, it is clear Mr Martin was specifically warned about the issue and that it wasn't adequately dealt with. In sharp contrast, when the matter crossed Ms Harney's desk a year later, the matter was promptly dealt with.
Mr Martin claims he was not even aware that a group was convened within his Department at the time to prepare a position paper on the legal issues surrounding the charges. Opposition parties have poured scorn on this explanation.
One of the few certainties about this messy saga is that Mr Travers will have his work cut out establishing who knew what, when they knew it, and why nothing was done.