TWO OF the State’s largest public service trade unions are to pay back nearly €240,000 which they received in “partnership funding” which was highlighted by the Comptroller and Auditor General this week and which is now the subject of a special audit by the HSE.
Impact said yesterday that it had repaid a total of €112,791.53 while the Irish Nurses and Midwives Organisation (INMO) is to give back €127,491.60.
Impact said that the bulk of the money it received had originally been earmarked for training of its activists and representatives in the health service but that this had been delayed. The union said that a small amount – €5,791 – related to foreign travel.
The INMO said it had received the money between 2004 and 2008 to pay for its local representatives to undergo joint training with management in relation to the change programme in the HSE. It said this training had not taken place for various reasons including a difficult industrial relations climate at times over recent years.
The union said that the money did not relate to foreign travel.
The report of the Comptroller and Auditor General on Wednesday revealed a sum of €876,000 had been paid by the Health Service National Partnership Forum into a controversial bank account which has been linked to the trade union Siptu. This account is already the subject of investigations into about €2.3 million paid into it under the Skill programme for up-skilling staff.
Siptu has said the account in question was not one of its authorised accounts.
HSE sources said that the intention was that some of the money paid by the forum into the account – which was known as the Siptu National Health and Local Authority Levy account – was to be distributed in turn to other health service trade unions.
In a statement last night Impact said that in some instances it had received grants or payments from the HSE partnership programmes to cover legitimate costs and expenses.
It said Impact and some of its staff had been extensively involved in various training and partnership activities over recent years. It said that among other things these related to health reforms and building capacity of union representatives to address changes in the health service.
“Most of the money received by Impact was unspent and remained in our accounts, where it showed as a ‘credit’. This was because our planned training was delayed by ongoing changes in HSE structures and uncertainty surrounding the direction of health service reform. In our judgment, it would not have been appropriate to continue with training projects until there was more certainty over the policies that the training was designed to address.
“On our own initiative, the union decided to return these grants because of our concerns that, beyond Impact’s knowledge or control, there had been inter-mingling of monies from different funding streams. This has subsequently been confirmed by the report of the Comptroller and Auditor General. A total of €112,791.53 has, therefore, been returned.”
The union said that a sum of €5,791.53 related to foreign travel. It said that it believed that “this travel was relevant to the activities intended by the partnership programmes but, in the light of recent controversies, it had taken steps to ensure that it has been funded by the union.”
INMO general secretary Liam Doran said it had not been possible to spend the money for the purpose for which it had been received and that to avoid any suggestion of impropriety its executive council had decided to return the money.
In a statement on Wednesday the HSE said that due to concerns which it had identified about the accountability of public moneys “it had already commenced a separate internal audit in relation to funds paid under the Action Plan for People Management”.