Opposition deputies will today launch a renewed effort to link former minister for health Micheál Martin to the illegal charging of nursing home patients when they begin questioning key figures involved in the controversy.
In a series of public hearings this week and next, the Oireachtas Committee on Health and Children will interview several high-ranking political and administrative figures, including Mr Martin; his former ministers of State at the Department of Health, Ivor Callely and Tim O'Malley; his former special advisers; and perhaps most crucially, his former secretary general Michael Kelly.
Mr Kelly, whose evidence on key parts of the controversy has conflicted with that of Mr Martin, moved from the department last month in the wake of the official report into the illegal charging. He has since been appointed to the Higher Education Authority.
Mr Kelly's presentation to the committee tomorrow will be the first occasion on which he will speak publicly on the issue.
Committee members will today question a former health board chief executive on whether he ever told Mr Martin directly about legal advice suggesting the charges were illegal.
Pat McLoughlin was the chief executive of the then South Eastern Health Board which in 2003 secured a legal opinion that there was no legal basis for levying charges on medical card patients who were in long-term care in public nursing homes or in beds contracted by the State from the private sector.
This opinion was subsequently submitted by the health board to the Department of Health and formed the basis for the meeting between ministers, senior civil servants and health board chiefs in the Gresham Hotel in Dublin on December 16th, 2003.
Mr Martin has said he was never shown this legal opinion when it reached the department, that he was late arriving for the meeting in the Gresham Hotel and that he was never informed about the issue afterwards.
Mr McLoughlin was not interviewed as part of the official report into the controversy, and there has been no public indication to date as to whether he ever raised the matter with politicians in the Department of Health prior to the December 2003 meeting.
Fine Gael spokesman on health Dr Liam Twomey told The Irish Times last night his questions today would focus on any communications regarding the legal opinion between Mr McLoughlin and Mr Martin.
