Committee to investigate Dunne inquiry costs

The Dáil's spending watchdog, the Public Accounts Committee, will this week begin an investigation into how the official inquiry into postmortem practices in hospitals and the retention of organs came to cost around €13 million - about six times the original estimate.

The committee is also expected to examine mechanisms in place by the HSE to safeguard the private income of patients in long-stay facilities. The committee believes there could be €30-€50 million in patients' private accounts following the receipt of large amounts of money under the Government's nursing home repayment scheme.

Much of the focus of the committee hearing on Thursday is expected to focus on the organ- retention inquiry, headed by senior counsel Anne Dunne, which was closed by the Government in March 2005.

The report submitted by the Dunne inquiry, which ran to 3,500 pages and had over 50 boxes of appendices, was never published following advice of the Attorney General.

An analysis of the organ-retention inquiry carried out by the Comptroller and Auditor General last summer found that initially the costs were estimated at around €1.9 million. However, by March 2005 these had risen to around €13 million.

The Comptroller found that inquiries should have terms of reference that are focused and unambiguous and there should be provisions for review milestones and reporting deadlines.

The Department of Health told the Comptroller that at the outset it had no indication that the original six-month deadline for the inquiry would not be achieved.

Meanwhile, the chairman of the Public Accounts Committee, Michael Noonan, said the hearing would also examine the safeguards put in place by the HSE for keeping the personal money of persons in long-stay accommodation.

He said this was increasingly important given the large amounts of money being repaid to such people under the nursing home repayments scheme.

The Secretary General of the Department of Health, Michael Scanlan, and HSE chief Prof Brendan Drumm are due to appear before the committee on Thursday.

The hearing may run to a second day to be scheduled for March.