Simon Harris (Wicklow, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I am willing to wait for the process to unfold and I welcome the belated willingness of St. Vincent's to be compliant by 31 March. However, as I said to you previously, we have had a number of meetings with the HSE in which we have been concerned about public pay policy but we have also been concerned about the protection of taxpayers' money within certain section 38 agencies. While this exercise being undertaken by the HSE is worthy, it is only concerned with public sector pay. Taking St. Vincent's as an example, when its representatives appeared before this committee, serious concerns were expressed about their complete and utter disregard for the consultants' contract and the fact that the public hospital is losing significant sums of money. I and other members have received correspondence from doctors, consultants, patients and nurses outlining the situation. To give one brief example, a doctor admitted a private patient to St. Vincent's Private Hospital, and then transferred the patient to the public hospital. The patient had an implantable pain management device inserted. The patient did not pay the private fees into the public system, and the public system was deprived of the money. A patient, whom I will not name, had an implantable device inserted costing thousands of euro. She was a private patient at a private hospital, but she was transferred to the public hospital to have the surgery. Basically, no bill was paid to the public hospital for a device costing more than €20,000. There is also the fact that St. Vincent's still has not rectified the situation whereby it has the same corporate governance crossover of directorships as the CRC had in respect of the Friends and Supporters of the CRC fund-raising group. The four directors on the St. Vincent's Foundation are all directors on the St. Vincent's board. I am happy to wait for the process to be completed, but that is one example in St. Vincent's.

We have discussed the National Maternity Hospital with Mr. Tony O'Brien, the director general. We read again in today's newspapers that there is a serious issue there. There is an allegation that a clinic, of which some members of senior management of the National Maternity Hospital are directors, is being given preferential treatment by the National Maternity Hospital, again at a potential cost to the taxpayer.

The remit of this committee is to ensure the public funds going into these institutions are safeguarded. It is all well and good for the HSE to go through this process, but it only relates to one aspect of what we have been discussing for months. I realise the HSE and Rehab representatives will appear before the committee next week, but perhaps some time could be set aside to discuss these other issues. It is not just a case of the CEO earning the right salary now so we can tick that box and say the job is done. There are much more serious corporate governance issues here that are rotten in some cases. I would hate to think that the HSE would consider the process to be finished because the CEO's salary is correct. There is massive loss of taxpayers' money.