Tánaiste and Minister for Health Mary Harney has said she was tempted to sack former secretary general of the Department of Health Michael Kelly before Christmas for providing a "seriously inaccurate" report to the Cabinet on the nursing home charge controversy.
Giving evidence before the Oireachtas Committee on Health and Children yesterday, Ms Harney said Mr Kelly had "wittingly" withheld information in a background report drawn up in mid-December; this was not acceptable.
Ms Harney said she had been tempted to "take action" against Mr Kelly when she discovered a few days later that information had been left out of the report prepared for the Cabinet.
However, she decided to hold back until the completion of an objective inquiry into the controversy.
Mr Kelly was transferred from his post in the Department of Health by the Government last March, following publication of the Travers report, and appointed chairman of the Higher Education Authority.
Ms Harney said that after the Attorney General delivered his "bombshell letter" last November - which found there was no legal basis for the nursing home charges that generated €2 million a week - she had asked Mr Kelly to prepare a brief for her to bring to Cabinet.
She said Mr Kelly's report made no mention of the fact that a letter had been prepared in the department the previous January seeking advice from the Attorney General on the issue, but had never been sent.
Ms Harney said Mr Kelly had also failed to set out in his report that, when health boards had been legally challenged on the charges by patients, they had been advised not to defend them.
Asked by committee chairman John Maloney (FF) whether she believed Mr Kelly had wittingly withheld information in his report for the Cabinet, the Tánaiste replied "yes".
Ms Harney said she had never been informed of the nursing home charge issue in briefings provided by Mr Kelly or other civil servants on her appointment as Minister last September. It would be grossly unfair to have one civil servant "carry the can" for a controversy that dated back 29 years.
However, Mr Kelly had failed to provide information that was readily available in the department, where officials had drawn up a background paper the previous January.
"Would any of you work in that environment if you could not trust what you were being told?" Ms Harney asked.
She said if she had been told last December that the letter to the Attorney General had not been sent due to human error "we would be talking about a very different situation".
