HSE’s ‘cold feet’ over evidence collected via surveillance for consultants case

ENTRAPMENT phone calls, fake appointments and private investigators were all deployed by the State in a bid to catch hospital consultants working in the private sector when they were supposed to be working in public hospitals.

But the evidence was not produced in court after the HSE expressed concerns after more than a year of surveillance.

Documents reveal they built up a dossier using private surveillance and a Department of Health memo – obtained under the Freedom of Information Act – details for the first time the techniques used to try and catch out the clinicians. Among these were ‘the advertising of private hospitals’ and calls to set up fake appointments with consultants who were not supposed to be working ‘off site’.

Private detectives also followed some clinicians, taking photographic evidence of their work outside the public system.

But in the end, the evidence was never produced in court and the State settled its claim from the consultants for extra pay after a long-running dispute in a deal that cost an estimated €200m in back pay.

The Government approved the operation in February 2017 and it was later discussed at a meeting in March this year, but a month later, the HSE, got cold feet and said it believed it was ‘inappropriate’ to continue.

Details of the operation come from a Department of Health memo, which said the Government was ‘surprised’ to find the HSE no longer supported the techniques being used to investigate consultants. It explained how the Government had agreed a strategy to ‘vigorously defend’ a pay claim being made by consultants in February 2017.

The memo said: ‘Following the decision, the Departments [Health, Finance, and Public Expenditure] engaged with the HSE for several months in relation to gathering evidence in relation to consultants’ private practice, on and offsite.’

But in April 2018, the HSE wrote to say it did not wish to continue with the surveillance because of ‘reservations’.