THE REPUBLIC’S largest hospital has confirmed that some of its staff took part in foreign trips associated with a controversial staff training fund, which is now at the centre of a series of official investigations.
In a statement yesterday, St James’s Hospital, Dublin, said that some of its personnel took part in study visits to healthcare systems abroad organised as part of the Skill programme.
However, the hospital has refused to say whether its chief executive, Ian Carter, participated on any of the 31 foreign trips associated with the Skill programme, which are now the subject of a number of inquiries.
The trade union Impact has also refused to disclose whether any of its officials took part in the overseas visits.
An internal audit carried out by the HSE found that some of the trips associated with the Skill programme, which included visits to Australia, the US, Hong Kong and the UK, were funded from a controversial €250,000 annual grant paid to a bank account in the name of the trade union Siptu.
The money channelled to Siptu was paid by the Department of Health as part of a €12 million annual allocation to the Skill programme.
The HSE audit found that travel expenditure had been processed outside of the Skill books of account and that a union employee had arranged and paid for overseas trips for public and other officials. It said that he had subsequently recouped the unvouched, unspecified costs from Skill or funded it from an annual grant provided by the Department of Health.
Siptu headquarters has denied that it ever received any of the money which was channelled by the Department of Health through the HSE and paid into an account known as the Siptu health and local authority levy fund.
The Irish Timesrevealed last month that senior officials in the Department of Health, the Department of Finance and the HSE took part in some of the overseas trips associated with the Skill programme. This programme aimed to provide training and upskilling for lower-paid staff in the health service such as porters, cleaners and caterers.
The statement from St James’s Hospital yesterday confirmed for the first time that staff in the voluntary hospital sector also travelled abroad on trips associated with the Skill programme.
In its statement, St James’s Hospital said that it could “confirm that a number of its clinical, management, and craft-worker staff participated in study visits abroad to healthcare systems organised as part of partnership, Skills and HSE programmes. The hospital had no involvement in planning and managing the arrangements”.
A hospital spokesman said that the partnership and HSE programmes mentioned in its statement were separate to the Skill project.
However, the hospital declined to state who had travelled abroad as part of the Skill trips and who had made the arrangements for the visits.
“The hospital understands that investigations are under way into the operation of the Skills programme and is happy to co-operate with any official inquiries,” it said.
Last Friday the HSE sought a formal Garda investigation into the Skill programme and payments to Siptu on the basis that public money could not be accounted for.
There are also internal investigations under way in the Department of Health, the Department of Finance and the HSE. The Comptroller and Auditor General, the watchdog for public expenditure, is also carrying out an inquiry as are the trustees of Siptu.