Simon Harris (Wicklow, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

A retired health official was going on foreign trips with other health officials and HSE officials, paid for out of this fund, a large chunk of which was made up of public health funding. Did any of the officials at any stage, anecdotally or from an audit point of view, think it was a little odd that they were all going off on a trip to Georgia, paid for by the taxpayer, and that a retired official who did not work for them any more was going with them? Did they not question why he was going on it? We had a similar conversation with the secretary general of SIPTU about a different example. It seems odd that this man who was retired from the health service was continuing to go on foreign trips with people from the health service and nobody said that this was a bit peculiar.