The Government has appointed Michael Scanlan as secretary general of the Department of Health and Children.
Mr Scanlan (49) has been an assistant secretary in the Department of Finance since December 2000, with responsibility for public expenditure policy.
He was educated in Templeogue College, Dublin, and joined the Civil Service in 1973.
He moved to the then Department of the Public Service in 1979, where he dealt at various stages with public service pay, conditions, pensions and training.
He has considerable experience dealing with the health services. He was responsible for health service expenditure within the Department of Finance, and in recent years worked closely with the Department of Health on the Government's healthcare reform programme, including the establishment of the Health Service Executive.
Mr Scanlan served as secretary to both the Gleeson and Buckley review bodies which examined pay for top-level groups in the public sector, including politicians, judges and hospital consultants.
Mr Scanlan takes over as secretary general in the Department of Health from Michael Kelly, who was moved to the Higher Education Authority following the Travers report on nursing home charges.
Following Mr Kelly's departure it was considered unlikely that any serving official in the Department of Health would be promoted to the top job.
One source close to the Government told The Irish Times yesterday that in the light of the comments of the Minister for Health Mary Harney about "systemic maladministration" in the Department of Health over the nursing home charges, it was always on the cards that the post would go to someone from another department.
It is not unprecedented for an official from the Department of Finance official to be appointed asto the senior civil servicepost in the Department of Health.The governor of the Central Bank, John Hurley, was promoted from the Department of Finance to be secretary general of the Department of Health in the early 1990s.
Under the Government's healthcare reforms, Mr Scanlan will head a department that will concentrate on policy issues. The day-to-day running of the health services has been given to the new Health Service Executive.
Unlike his predecessor, Mr Scanlan will not be the accounting officer for the health service, the person responsible for the €11 billion voted for health spending by the Dáil.
The Government decided last autumn that in future the chief executive of the Health Service Executive rather than the secretary general of the Department of Health will be the accounting officer.
