CRC admits five senior staff still get top-up payments

Five senior staff at the Central Remedial Clinic (CRC) are still in receipt of top-up payments, it emerged yesterday amid calls for a Government inquiry into the charity.

The organisation yesterday admitted that money raised by a charitable company had been used to top up the salaries of staff including its former chief executive.

The money for the top-up payments came from the Friends and Supporters of the Remedial Clinic – a separate company which generates funds from a lottery – at a time when the organisation was cutting services for adults and children with disabilities.

The top-up payments included the organisation's then chief executive Paul Kiely, who was on a State salary of €106,900 prior to his retirement.

Pay policy breach

This was supplemented by the clinic with a further €136,000, resulting in an overall pay package of more than €240,000.

These unauthorised allowances are a breach of public sector pay policy.

The Health Service Executive's director general Tony O'Brien told the Oireachtas earlier this week the HSE may not be able to investigate the friends and supporters organisation as it was not funded by the executive.

Instead, he recommended it be examined by the charity regulator. However, legislation for a charity regulatory office has not yet been enacted and officials expect it may not in place until at least the second half of next year.

Independent TD Shane Ross, who raised the issue of the clinic's funding at the Dáil's Public Accounts Committee (PAC), last night called on the organisation's board of directors to resign.

"The HSE should review its funding to the Central Remedial Clinic immediately if the organisation has money elsewhere – in this case the €14 million found to be in the friends and supporters account, which it is essentially failing to be used to provide services to people with disabilities," he said.

Fully compliant

In a statement, the clinic said the majority of fundraising money had enabled the clinic to fund a large number of capital projects amounting to millions of euro over recent years.

It also said there has been an agreed position since 2009 with the HSE to “phase out the level of management salaries” for nine individuals who were being paid over and above public pay scales.

At present, five of these posts remain and two are due to retire in the next two years, it said. It said the salary of its current chief executive, Brian Conlan, was fully compliant with public pay policy.

Meanwhile, the master of the National Maternity hospital Dr Rhona Mahony has said she stands over the statement she issued last week regarding additional remuneration to her, which emerged on foot of the HSE audit into top -up payments.

Department of Health files maintained Dr Mahony was receiving a privately funded allowance of €45,000 on top of her State salary. In her statement last week she denied this was a "top-up" payment but said it represented professional fees from private patients.

However in evidence to the PAC this week, HSE auditor Geraldine Smith said the hospital itself had described the payment as a privately funded allowance.