€10,000 spent on boards' media training

Health boards have confirmed they spent over €10,000 sending senior management for training on how to answer questions put to them by journalists.

Twelve senior members of the 10 health boards and the Eastern Regional Health Authority were sent for training with the Promedia communications organisation at a cost of €786 each. This is made up of €650 plus VAT.

The training was funded out of each of the board's own budgets.

Part of the training, carried out over one day in March, involved the senior personnel being put through mock interviews by RTÉ's news presenter Bryan Dobson.

The one-day training course was suggested to the boards' CEO group and organised by the ERHA's director of communications, Ms Maureen Browne.

The training was organised in advance of the publication of two major reports on the health service, both of which are due to be published on Tuesday.

The Prospectus report will recommend the abolition of all health boards and their replacement with four regional executive bodies. These will have greater professional and consumer representation at the expense of local political representatives.

The Brennan report, which examined value-for-money in the health service, has proposed that a new health service executive agency be established to tackle the "management vacuum" at the heart of the health system. It also wants all new hospital consultants to work exclusively in the public sector.

The ERHA and the North Eastern Health Board both sent two senior people.

Though most of the boards sent their chief executives, the Western Health Board, the East Coast Area Health Board and the Northern Area Health Board in the Eastern region, sent other members of their management staff. The Southern Health Board did not send anyone.

Reports of the training programme have already given rise to controversy over Mr Dobson's role in 'coaching' health board personnel to deal with questions from journalists. Mr Dobson said this week he regretted taking part in the training while RTÉ has admitted an "error of judgement" in allowing him to.

In a letter to yesterday's Irish Times, the PD TD Ms Fiona O'Malley said concentration on Mr Dobson's role sidelined a "far more significant issue".

"Were public funds used to pay for this media training?" she asked. "It is not acceptable that public servants should ever use public funds to prepare themselves to reject or challenge what is expected to become Government policy."