Briefing material circulated to the former minister for health Micheál Martin in December 2003 contained a summary of legal opinion obtained by the South Eastern Health Board that expressed significant concern about the legality of nursing-home charges, the author of the official report into the controversy said yesterday.
John Travers was the first witness before the Oireachtas Committee on Health and Children, which is carrying out an investigation on foot of his report.
Mr Martin has claimed he did not know anything about the nursing-home charge issue and that he was late arriving for a meeting with health board chiefs in December 2003, at which the problem was discussed.
In evidence to the committee yesterday, Mr Travers said the briefing material for this meeting contained a summary of the legal opinion, although he indicated this material may not have been as detailed as in the full legal report.
In a three-hour hearing before the committee, Mr Travers defended the findings of the report, which were strongly critical of the Department of Health but which critics have claimed were not equally robust in their criticism of ministers.
Mr Travers said he believed the nursing-home charges issues had stemmed from an overall corporate failure in the Department of Health involving both civil servants and politicians over many years.
However, he believed the fault lay more with the administration than with ministers.
Mr Travers rejected suggestions from Labour Party health spokeswoman, Liz McManus, that he had adopted different rules for civil servants than for ministers and that he was being coy in his findings.
He said his report had found politicians and advisers should have probed the issue deeper.
Mr Travers said he believed it was the function of civil servants to bring to the fore issues of concern to ministers.
It was clear from papers that officials in the Department of Health were aware that charges for people over 70 in long-term care in health board institutions could have been illegal.
"I would have expected that there would have been a very good analysis done of the issues and set out very clearly in a memo prepared within the Department and made available to the minister so that there could be no excuse or lack of clarity of any sort," Mr Travers said.
