‘WHITEWASH’ ON BEACON SCHOOL JABS
Hospital review deems chief acted ‘in good faith’ despite outcry
A REVIEW into the decision by the Beacon Hospital’s chief to use spare Covid-19 jabs to vaccinate teachers at his children’s school has been branded a ‘whitewash’ after it found he made the offer ‘in good faith’.
The hospital’s board yesterday said it still has ‘full confidence’ in its chief executive Michael Cullen, despite the incident sparking widespread public outrage, with Health Minister Stephen Donnelly later suspending vaccine operations at the Beacon as a result.
In March, the Irish Daily Mail exclusively revealed that the private hospital had given ‘leftover’ jabs to up to 20 teachers at the feepaying St Gerard’s School in Bray.
This happened at a time when the hospital had
been tasked with vaccinating healthcare staff, and when teachers were ranked just 11th on the State’s vaccination priority list.
Publishing the full report yesterday, the non-executive directors of the Beacon board said they regretted the series of events and the public upset that followed its exposure.
However, they said they retained full confidence in their CEO, Michael Cullen, whom they said had provided the hospital with ‘strong leadership and vision’.
The independent review into the incident was conducted by Eugene McCague, former managing partner and chairman of Arthur Cox and former HSE board member.
Mr McCague concluded that the decision by Mr Cullen was taken in a ‘time-pressured situation in the mistaken belief that the risk of doses being wasted entitled the Beacon to administer the doses to anyone who was available, other than patients’, the report said.
Mr McCague added that ‘while the basis on which Mr Cullen made his decision was incorrect, I am satisfied that he made the decision in good faith’.
Yesterday there was an immediately furious reaction to the findings. Fine Gael senator Regina Doherty hit out at the conclusion and said the review was ‘not good enough’, while People Before Profit TD Paul Murphy said the Beacon boss has been ‘let off the hook’.
Mr Murphy told the Irish Daily Mail: ‘I think it’s fair to call it a whitewash. It’s 23 pages and most of it is about things that aren’t the central issue. The key issue is ‘why was the decision made for this school?’. They literally don’t address that question at all.
‘It never gets to the heart of it which is that it’s cronyism, it’s elitist queue-jumping by Michael Cullen for his children’s private school teachers. He absolutely should have resigned or been bound to resign.’
However, he still holds out hope that there will be repercussions for the Beacon and Mr Cullen.
Mr Murphy added: ‘There is still a HSE report so let’s see what that comes up with. It’s clear that the board is just circling the wagons to protect its CEO and saying, “well, it was in good faith”. What does that even mean?
‘He has absolutely been let off the hook here 100% by the board. He gets a very small slap on the wrist and gets told that what he did was in good faith.’
Senator Doherty said the whole controversy and this new report is a ‘classic example of the Irish way’ and was simply ‘not good enough’. The former minister told Newstalk: ‘That review puts the hands up and says, “yes, we made a mistake, but we did it for the right reason” and it quietly goes into the ether.
She added: ‘We have this lovely report that says how wonderful the vaccine rollout was in the Beacon Hospital, notwithstanding the little matter of the 20 misused vaccines for St Gerard’s. It’s not good enough.’
Mr McCague also confirmed in his report that the decision to vaccinate the teachers in Bray was taken by Mr Cullen alone.
‘The decision was taken by Mr Cullen quickly, without consultation, and was communicated to the Bray teachers through the principal of the junior school while Mr Cullen was at home and before he returned to the vaccination clinic,’ he said.
Mr McCague said significant efforts were made to locate healthcare workers on the Beacon campus for the spare vaccines. He added that Beacon vaccinators believed there was an urgency to use opened vials as soon as possible as the doses became ‘gloopy’.
He said the staff made the ‘sensible’ and ‘reasonable’ decision to telephone managers of wards or services to try to identify people on the campus for vaccination. However, he said the Beacon did not contact the local HSE area office to see if it could provide public healthcare workers to be vaccinated at short notice.
He said the office had told him that it did have a reserve list and could have done this – but the Beacon staff did not know this at the time, and were concerned about the short time frame.
Mr McCague also said it was ‘unfortunate’ that Mr Cullen used the phrase ‘HSE permission’ in his message to the school principal.
He said the principal may have inferred that the HSE approved of
‘Cronyist, elitist queue-jumping’ ‘Board’s decision is regrettable’
the vaccine offer, whereas Mr Cullen had merely believed that he was following HSE directions not to waste any vaccines.
Sinn Féin’s health spokesperson David Cullinane told the Mail it was ‘regrettable’ that the board of the Beacon has chosen not to take any further action. ‘The board acknowledges the decision to vaccinate teachers in a school was not in line with the national vaccine priority list nor did it have HSE approval,’ he said. ‘It is regrettable the board has sought not to take any action.’
The HSE confirmed to the Mail that while its own report into the scandal was delayed due to the cyber attack, it expects to publish its findings in the next fortnight.