‘Lessons have to be learned’ from Holohan TCD controversy, Taoiseach says

The Taoiseach has said “lessons have to be learned” from the controversy over the appointment of Dr Tony Holohan to a Trinity College Dublin academic position. However Micheál Martin said he did not see there being further consequences for anyone, and said he had full confidence in the secretary general of the Department of Health Robert Watt.

“Transparency from the outset would have been appropriate,” he said. “I think it’s regrettable given the fact that Tony has played a very strong role in bringing us through the pandemic. But there has to be a process too and I think there has to be full transparency in relation to all of these issues.”

The chief medical officer on Saturday announced he would not to proceed with his secondment to TCD and will retire from July instead.

The appointment to the TCD role has sparked controversy since it emerged that it was intended that Dr Holohan leave on an open-ended secondment, an arrangement which is usually time-bound in the civil service. Dr Holohan said he did not wish “ to see the controversy of the last few days continuing”. The question of who would fund the role also caused controversy, with Trinity saying last week the post would be funded by the Department of Health.

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Taoiseach calls for ‘pause’ ahead of report on Holohan secondment

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Speaking on Sunday the Taoiseach said: “There will be a comprehensive summary and report tomorrow from the secretary general in health to the Minister for Health but I think certainly lessons have to be learned.”

“Anything that involves the spending of public money or any substantive multi-annual programme of research is a policy issue that does require approval by government.”

Mr Martin said he was “puzzled” by reports that Dr Holohan’s salary was not to come from public funds. “It’s clear to me that this was to be funded by the exchequer from what I know now.”

Mr Martin said that details given to him on Thursday by the Minister for Health Stephen Donnelly shows the Holohan appointment was to funded by the Department of Health, through the Heallth Research Board, a state body.

Mr Martin suggested that the appointment was a policy matter, not a personnel issue. But he also said that any discussion on the issue should not be “personalised”. He said he had full confidence in Mr Watt, describing him as a “capable public servant”.

“This is very regrettable issue the way it has unfolded and transpired,” he said. “Could have been done better. Lessons have to be learned from it.” “We’re not happy with it,” he said.

Asked if there should be consequences for people involved, Mr Martin said he would prefer to focus on the lessons to be learned. Asked if this meant there would be no consequences, Mr Martin said: “Let’s see the report tomorrow and let’s take it in terms of the lessons to be learned.”

‘Ham-fisted’

Elsewhere Sinn Fein’s health spokesman David Cullinane and Fianna Fail TD John Laharte, both members of the Oireachtas health committee, respectively described the handling of Dr Holohan’s planned move to Trinity as “a mess” and “ham-fisted”.

Both TDs said they wanted it discussed before the committee in the coming days and to have the Minster for Health and Mr Watt, attend.

The “mess” is entirely the making of “very senior civil servants within the Department but also of the Minister for Health who failed to clarify many of these issues for days” and has “real questions to answer”, Mr Cullinane told RTE Radio One’s This Week.

“I believe senior civil servants are running rings around the Minister for Health not just on this issue but also the establishment of regional health areas, consultant contract talks, all of thse issue which are really important”.

Senior officials in the HSE and the Department, not the Minister, are “running the show”, and that’s not the way it should be, he said.

The Holohan matter is a mess, he added, of the head of the Department, who, when before the committee last week was asked about issues of process and procedures and “questions were not answered”.

At the end of the day there has to be fair procedures when it comes to public appointments and issues in relation to public pay and very senior officials, he said. “There has to be robust procedures but they also have to be implemented and followed without fear or favour.”

The communication around this was “quite poor but we were also told this was a secondment when the civil service handbook makes quite clear that secondments can only be temporary arrangements and for a specified period of time and yet we were told this was a permanent transfer.”

The Deputy said he never had a difficulty with Dr Holohan taking up the TCD position, thought that had value and it would have been “acceptable”, “if we were told from day one, he was not on a secondment but was taking up a permanent role in Trinity College”.

All of that confusion “was entirely the Department’s own making” and the Minister’s authority “is being called into question now because he failed to pause the process, he failed to ask the hard questions and it fell to the Taoiseach to intervene and I think that’s really problematic for the Minister.”

“We’re still none the wiser as to who came up with this procedure, who processed, who signed off on it.”

Mr Cullinane said he wished Dr Holohan well in his retirement but would have preferred to see him working in the public system. This outcome, as well as being a blow for the former CMO personally, is “a blow for the public service and for many of us who want to see a beefing up of public health departments as well as public health specialists working in the public system”.

He agreed with Mr Laharte there should be an early meeting of the health committee to discuss the report due on Monday from the Secretary General on the matter.

Mr Laharte said he would welcome an early meeting to discuss the report and to call whatever witnesses, including the Minister and Mr Watt to attend.

He said Dr Holohan’e experience was clearly invaluable in the creation of the TCD position and the intention was to ensure courses would be designed to ensure that any gaps concerning pandemic related courses would be filled.

The perception of the process “is the key thing”, he said. This is the first government that created a cabinet position of Minister for Higher Education, Innovation and Research and he would have thought, if Trinity wanted to create this, one of its first ports of call would be government for an input because of the public and mental health and other aspects. A “much more holistic approach” was needed to the matter, he said.

“One of the clear messages from this is that the public need to know that the government is in charge,” the TD said.

This has been “ham-fisted”, not just in terms of communications but terms of the design and creation of the position, and is “one of a series of less than transparent appointments to very senior positions in the civil service.”

He accepted it is “a continuous judgment call” in terms of what the secretary general and senior officials tell the Minister who cannot be overwhelmed or expected to know every detail in a department.

“This is a really significant appointment of a very, very senior public official held in high esteem by the public and a position understood and welcomed, while it allowed him to go to Trinity, it also maintained him as a public servant.”

It was very clear from the statements of government ministers when the appointment was announced they saw this as the departure of a public official, Mr Holohan, to Trinity, Mr Laharte said. “A Minister is only as good as the information he is given.”