The HSE has made a formal complaint to gardaí in relation to the use of a €2.3 million training fund for lower-skilled health workers.
The complaint will be based on the fact that large sums of public money cannot be accounted for.
The fund, which has now been suspended pending separate investigations by the gardaí and the Comptroller Auditor General, was issued annually by the Department of Health to the trade union Siptu to upgrade the skill levels of health staff.
The money was paid into a bank account bearing the name “Siptu national health and local authority levy fund”.
The funding is linked to the HSE’s Skills training programme, aimed at upskilling support staff and line managers across the health service in non-clinical services such as portering, house-keeping and catering.
The HSE is also to establish an independent investigation whether the Skill programme complied with governance arrangements since 2005.
As part of the funding for the Skill programme, the Department of Health channelled €250,000 per year through the HSE to Siptu. The union has categorically rejected that it ever received this money.
It has emerged that some 31 overseas trips were paid for by the fund over several years, including visits to Australia in 2005, to New York in 2006, to Boston in 2007, to Savannah in the US in 2008, and to New York in 2009.
An internal HSE audit maintained that some of the funding given by the Department of Health had been used to pay for foreign trips involving public officials and others which were not properly accounted for.
Siptu has said it has begun its own internal investigation but has said complained it is being hampered because the HSE has not provided it with a copy of its internal audit report.
Speaking to reporters in Co Cork today, Minister of Health Mary Harney warned there will be “tough” measures taken against any public officials found to have misappropriated State money connected with the HSE training fund.
Ms Harney said would be “very concerned” if any public money was misused or if there was an inappropriate foreign travel.
“The matter is subject to investigation both by Comptroller Auditor General and by An Garda Síochána and, to be fair, this came to light through the HSE’s own internal audit and when it came to light, pending the outcome of the investigation, the HSE has suspended all payments," she said.
“The reason we have internal audits in the organisations like the HSE is to precisely pick up on issues like this."
She said she needed to be careful about commenting on the matter prior to the outcome of the investigations.
Ms Harney said her department was preparing documentation for the office of the Comptroller Auditor General, and that tough decisions would have to be made if there was any inappropriate use of public money.