Hospital owes the taxpayer straight answers

IF WE have learned one thing from the recent Public Accounts Committe investigations into the Central Remedial Clinic and Rehab, it is that we need absolute transparency and accountability wherever public money is being spent – no matter how worthy the work being done.

Whatever about accountability, the recent HSE audit of so-called Section 38 agencies – health service providers that are in receipt of private as well as public funding – revealed a woeful lack of transparency about salary levels and other aspects of senior management.

One of the hospitals identified by the HSE as not being in full compliance with its pay and recruitment guidelines was Stewarts Hospital. Now, as a result of the Irish Mail on Sunday’s investigations, further deeply worrying questions have arisen about Stewarts.

It is, for example, unclear whether six recent internal promotions at Stewarts were in breach of HSE guidelines. Meanwhile, the circumstances in which disgraced ex-trade union boss Matt Merrigan was appointed a trustee of the Stewarts pension fund are shrouded in mystery.

Stewarts has refused to tell us whether it sought HSE approval for the recent promotions.

On Mr Merrigan’s appointment, it has given us three different versions of events over the course of the past six weeks. Both situations are utterly unsatisfactory.

The CRC and Rehab scandals have raised major concerns about how taxpayers’ money is spent by such semi-autonomous agencies. The least we deserve from Stewarts is straight answers to straight questions – not further stonewalling, obfuscation and confusion.

Once again, we have an organisation engaged in worthy and important work on behalf of the Irish public, but whose track record when it comes to properly accounting for taxpayers’ money and justifying its own managerial decisions does not exactly inspire confidence. That is no longer good enough.