Over €28m spent on other union activities, report shows

INTERNAL REVIEW:THE DEPARTMENT of Health spent more than €28 million on union–management partnership activities other than the Skill programme between 2000 and 2004, according to an internal review.

Of this sum, it is estimated that €795,000 was subsequently disbursed to Siptu, the report commissioned by department secretary general Michael Scanlan states.

Most of the non-Skill payments, amounting to over €19 million, were funnelled through the Health Sector National Partnership Forum and was used to give grants to partnership committees and support various projects. Another €4 million was given to the Office for Health Management, which was set up in 1997 to develop a management strategy for the health service.

The report by personnel officer Barry Murphy says the funding given to such bodies supported a range of activities including, but not confined to, union-management partnership. From 2005 on, direct payments from the department ceased and the HSE took over funding for these activities.

The report also found over €312,000 was given to the Irish Nurses’ Organisation between 2000 and 2004, mostly to establish and maintain a website. The Psychiatric Nurses’ Organisation got €50,000 towards the cost of establishing a research department.

Four department officials participated in five different trips relating to skills and partnership under the Skill programme, the report prepared also states.

All of the trips listed were to the US and took place between 2004 and 2008. One official, Bernard Carey, took part in four trips, to New York (twice), Boston and Savannah, Georgia.

The total claims arising from these visits was €6,290, but the report says this was not the total cost of the trips, as airline and accommodation costs were in many cases met from “non-departmental sources”.

A number of other trips took place in respect of which nothing was claimed from the department, but the costs were met from “partnership” sources. A further trip to Ottawa and Toronto in 2004 was paid for by the Office of Health Management.

The report provides an overlapping list of 10 trips in which department officials participated which took place “in a management-union context”. Destinations visited included Vancouver, Australia via the US, and Los Angeles and Australia.

A retired official told Mr Murphy he was invited by a Siptu official to join a union-management group for “study visits” to New York in 2006, Boston in 2007, Savannah in 2008 and New York in 2009. His travel and hotel expenses were paid by the Siptu official.

Three officials’ wives accompanied them on some trips, the report states, but the officials paid their costs rather than the department. Mr Murphy says the guidance from the Department of Finance on the rates of subsistence applying to overseas travel are “less than entirely clear”.