Robert Watt’s decision to give TCD €2m a year focus of two inquiries

An undertaking by Robert Watt to provide a “ring-fenced” €2 million per annum to Trinity College Dublin as part of Dr Tony Holohan’s secondment will be the focus of two separate probes into the matter.

In a letter of intent to TCD provost Prof Linda Doyle in February, Mr Watt, the secretary general of the Department of Health, committed to providing the funding, which would have totalled €20 million if the 56-year old chief medical officer (CMO) remained as professor of public health strategy for 10 years.

Minister for Health Stephen Donnelly is expected to announce on Tuesday the name of the independent person who will carry out the external review. It is expected to be completed within three to four weeks.

The review was ordered by Taoiseach Micheál Martin on Wednesday night following the publication of a 12-page briefing note by Mr Watt, which strongly defended his role in the matter.

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Funding commitment

Separately, the Oireachtas Committee on Public Expenditure agreed on Thursday to write to Mr Watt, government secretary Martin Fraser and Mr Donnelly, asking them to attend its meeting on April 27th. The committee has also requested all correspondence related to the appointment and its circumstances.

The Taoiseach said on Thursday he had not been aware of the commitment to provide TCD with €2 million of funding as part of the secondment agreement.

“No, I was not aware of that in advance of the issue pertaining to the research proposal around the secondment mentor of the chief medical officer to Trinity or how it would be funded,” Mr Martin said during a visit to Galway on Sunday.

In the letter of intent to Prof Doyle, Mr Watt committed to “make an annual ring-fenced allocation of €2 million for the duration of the secondment, to be administered through the HRB [Health Research Board]”.

Without reference

Senior Government sources said on Thursday that Mr Watt’s decision to offer €2 million a year to TCD in funding without reference to others, plus the fact that the HRB was not informed, would be a focus of the review.

“There needs to be an independent look at the governance of the process,” said one source. “Serious lessons should be learned for the Civil Service and for the Government from this.”

On Thursday, the HRB issued a statement to say it was “not involved in any discussion around this post and has received no correspondence from either the Department of Health or TCD in relation to funding the CMO secondment”.

Sinn Féin finance spokesman Pearse Doherty, a member of the all-party committee, said serious questions remained on the matter of the €2 million ring-fenced funding.

“You cannot have a senior civil servant allotting millions of euro of funding without any recourse to the expenditure or estimates or proper procedures or proper oversight,” he said.