Two of ‘Grace’ staff work for Tusla
HSE director general Tony O Brien confirmed the situation yesterday during a meeting in which he contradicted previous evidence last year and said he was "irate" over being kept in the dark about the new information until this Wednesday.
Speaking during a three-hour Dáil public accounts committee meeting to clarify incorrect information given to the cross-party group last year, caused by the findings of the long-delayed Conal Devine and Resilience Ireland reports published earlier this month, Mr O Brien said that he had previously inadvertently outlined a false version of events.
He said that while he told the PAC in February 2016 that none of the people who agreed to leave Grace at the home despite a decision to remove her in 1996 are still working in the public service, this is not true.
In a letter to the PAC which was published before the meeting yesterday, Mr O Brien said that although the individuals have retired from the HSE and are receiving full pensions, a fresh examination by the HSE has found that one given the pseudonym H3 in the Conal Devine report retired in 2012 but is still working part-time for another public service.
Under questioning from Labour's Alan Kelly, Sinn Féin's David Cullinane and the Social Democrats Catherine Murphy, he said this person is working part-time for Tusla - a situation he was only informed of on Wednesday.
"If you'd have been sitting in the same room as me yesterday [Wednesday] when I was told, you'd have seen I was doing a fairly good impression of what the media says about you... Irate," he told Labour's Alan Kelly, before later adding that the incident "makes you question the other information, lets be honest about it".
Facing further questioning from unaligned Independent TD Catherine Connolly, Mr O Brien also admitted that a second person given the pseudonym H6 in the Conal Devine report is also "currently employed in Tusla".
However, while the Irish Examiner understands this individual is working at a high-level management position, Mr O Brien declined to comment any further.
Meanwhile, Mr O Brien has also insisted it is wrong to say there was any deliberate delay in publishing the only recently released 2012 Conal Devine report.
Questioned on the issue by Fine Gael TD Josepha Madigan, the HSE director general said it was "a coincidence" that a formal HSE garda request to publish the report and the related Resilience Ireland file was not until March 6, 2015 - 24 hours after a whistle-blower made a protected disclosure to the PAC.
Mr O Brien suggested the close connection between the dates was because "there are only so many days in the year", and insisted the HSE was only told about the protected disclosure four days later.
However, while citing internal HSE conversations with its solicitors in the days before the date, he admitted that the HSE did not seek permission to publish until March 6, 2015, and had only been in contact with the garda until that point - confirming a recent RTE Radio This Week report on the case.
Mr O Brien was also asked a number of times by Mr Kelly and other PAC members why HSE social care director Pat Healy, who was previously a senior figure in the south east, did not attend yesterday's meeting.
However, despite concern over the non-appearance, the HSE director general said it was because Mr Healy had only been informally asked to attend with 15 hours' notice and was not formally included in the initial meeting request earlier this month.
The Grace case is now the subject of a State commission of investigation, which is due to report back on cover-up, political interference and other serious concerns within the next 12 months.
