The fallout from the Travers report into illegal nursing home charges could set a precedent to let Government ministers off the hook for errors within their departments, a Labour TD has told an Oireachtas committee.
Labour health spokeswoman Liz McManus told the Oireachtas Committee on Health and Children that civil servants should not be held responsible for matters that ministers are politically accountable for.
Labour health spokeswoman Liz McManus
Members of the all-party committee questioned John Travers, the author of the report, at a hearing today.
Refunding the 300,000 people illegally charged for nursing home care could cost the State up to €2 billion.
"When we look at the outcome of this report, heads didn't roll. Only one head rolled and that was the civil servant's head," Ms McManus said. "A natural concern now that is that where problems exist at departmental level, the politicians will be let off the hook - and that is a very deep-seated concern that exists."
The Travers report, ordered by Minister for Health Mary Harney, found there were serious administration failures within the
department on handling the nursing homes charges, but that no minister was ever substantially briefed on the gravity of the issue.
The department's secretary general, Michael Kelly, was immediately transferred to the Higher Education Authority when the report was published in early March.
Ms McManus said that under the Ministers and Secretaries Act, a minister has to be accountable for matters that he is aware of, or could be expected to be aware of.
Addressing Mr Travers, she asked: "Why is it that you haven't apportioned responsibility for the fact that this minister, Micheál Martin, was unique in terms of the information that was provided to him.
"One would presume that the minister should have known what was going on and he can't plead ignorance," she said.
Mr Travers, who appeared before the committee on his own, said he felt that there was a greater responsibility on administrators in the department to highlight such issues as the nursing homes charges to the serving minister.
"The failure was greater on the part of the administrators than it was on the politicians," he added.
Fine Gael health spokesman Dr Liam Twomey said: "It's a huge bridge for me to pass that there are at least five or six very senior advisers and ministers of state, and yet they were wandering around the department for three or four years without a notion in the world of the importance of the issue."
Mr Travers said that ministers and ministers of state should meet "every few weeks" but no relevant written records of these meetings were provided to him when compiling his report.
Mr Kelly and Mr Martin are due to appear before the all-party committee next week, along with Ministers of State Tim O'Malley and Ivor Callely, who served in the department between June 2002 and September 2004.
PA