Shane Ross (Dublin South, Independent) | Oireachtas source

I would like to begin by referring to the letter that the Chairman received from the director general of the HSE yesterday. We have all got copies of it. I want to get those issues out in the open before I raise them with Mr. Conlan. It appears that at its meeting of 11 December last, this committee was misled about the terms of the pension awards to Mr. Paul Kiely. It was certainly misled by omission, and I suggest it was knowingly misled. According to the letter that was sent to the Chairman, there are specific issues regarding what we were told. The letter suggests that an additional lump sum was paid to Mr. Kiely, and not declared, as part of a confidential agreement that was obviously never supposed to see the light of day. The letter also suggests that payments made to Mr. Kiely might be in breach of the memorandum and articles of association of the CRC. This is an extraordinarily serious suggestion for the HSE to make. We are talking about large payments which, as part of a kind of pretend operation, allow Mr. Kiely to be paid a pension as though he had worked until November 2016. We did not know about that either. Before we go ahead and ask questions of Mr. Conlan, who was on the board at the time, I would like to ask the representatives of the HSE whether they have anything with which they can back this up. Can they give us any evidence in support of what has been suggested?