PAC chairman defends call for resignation of health bosses

Chairman of the Dáil's Public Accounts Committee (PAC) John McGuinness has defended his call for the resignation of two top health officials over their handling of overspending at the HSE.

His comments follow criticism from Taoiseach Enda Kenny yesterday that the Fianna Fáil TD had "over-politicised the issue" of health budgets by demanding the resignations of HSE director-general Tony O'Brien and secretary-general of the Department of Health Ambrose McLoughlin at a meeting of the PAC on Thursday.

Mr McGuinness dismissed allegations of "publicity seeking" by other PAC members, including Fine Gael TD Áine Collins and Labour TD Robert Dowds, saying HSE budgets were "out of control" and he was "acting in the interests of the taxpayer" by calling for the resignation of the two civil servants.

“There are many departments in the last few years that have handled taxpayers’ money very badly. It is the job of the PAC to go along and interrogate how that money was spent, and to bring about a debate that will result in recommendations to the Minister. This is what the meeting was about.”

He said the HSE had given a commitment that absenteeism would be reduced and hospitals would be compelled to operate within their allocated budgets, but this had not been achieved.

He said he had targeted the two civil servants involved because “they are the ones being paid to do the job”.

“We have two senior civil servants, highly paid, managing a budget, and they are not managing it very well, they are not managing their staff levels very well,” he said.

“I would have thought the outrage would have been about the fact that in Limerick they are paying someone €258,000 to do a job that should normally attract a salary of €116,000. I would have thought the story would have been the €63 million overspend on acute hospitals.”

Speaking on the same programme, Minister for Children Charlie Flanagan said Mr McGuinness had "overstepped the mark" by calling for their resignation before a report on the matter had been produced by the PAC.

He accused Mr McGuinness of pursuing “his own agenda to replace Micheál Martin as leader of Fianna Fáil”.