John McGuinness (Carlow-Kilkenny, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

Are the minutes of the meeting of 6 March 2014 agreed? Agreed.

We have revised the decision of last week’s meeting on two items, namely, the documentation relating to the HSE and Rehab and the records relating to the whistleblower. The committee will hold on to the box provided to it by the whistleblower until such time as our work on it is completed.

We agreed this morning to issue a request to Rehab for it to submit documentation directly to the committee.

No. 1, correspondence, dated 5 March 2014, from SOLAS regarding follow-up information requested at the meeting on 27 February 2014 is to be noted and published, as is correspondence, dated 11 March 2014, from the Rehab Group regarding further information requested at our meeting of 27 February 2014. No. 3B6 is correspondence from Tom Casey Solicitors, dated 11 March 2014, regarding a statement from John Kelly. The committee reviewed this correspondence earlier. The statement contains several serious allegations against named individuals who have or had associations with the Rehab Group.

The committee has taken legal advice on the statement and has decided to forward a copy of the correspondence to the Garda Síochána, pursuant to its obligations under the Criminal Justice Act 2011 and other enactments. The allegations contained in the statement fall outside the committee’s remit and could potentially involve criminal wrongdoing. In that regard, the committee has agreed to refer the matter to the appropriate authorities, in this case An Garda Síochána. The document is no longer a document of the committee and therefore, if published, does not have privilege.

We have a letter, dated 11 March 2014, from Rehab which is the reply to the committee on outstanding issues from our meeting of 27 February 2014. It will be published. It falls short in answering our queries of what we expected from Rehab.

A number of issues arise from this correspondence and have not been dealt with. We have no details on how much was paid to Mr. Flannery for his consultancy work or the source of the money. That raises the question whether it was part of the €700,000 referred to at the meeting which came from the charitable lotteries fund. One of the major issues on the Rehab Group is the lack of transparency regarding how public moneys are accounted for, therefore as part of the next hearing we will extend an invitation to Mr. Flannery and to the director of finance for the Rehab Group. We are doing this to give the group and the director of finance an opportunity to walk us through the various accounts so we can follow the public money and the charitable donations that come to Rehab. This is a key issue.

We will also need to know more about Mr. Flannery's consultancy work in the context of lobbying the Government and the charitable lotteries fund. Much information has come into the public domain in the past week and we need to clarify this in terms of public accountability. We are anxious to hear direct evidence from Mr. Flannery. The salaries being paid to senior executives are out of line with the charities sector and based on information the HSE gave in the context of the Central Remedial Clinic, CRC, they appear to be above public service norms. The HSE is doing a piece of work on returns from section 39 agencies and will be able to comment on this aspect of our work. The information supplied from the Towers Watson report does not provide a basis for making decisions on salaries. I am sure that whether or not this is the full context of the Towers Watson report, we will need to hear about this from the remuneration committee, who will be invited to the next hearing.

We need to know how much is charged back to the HSE and SOLAS for executive salaries. We need to know how the profitability of Rehab Enterprise is contingent on a subsidy from the Department of Social Protection and whether other states have made similar subsidies. If these are factors, they clearly point to the fact that Rehab is very much a public sector, not a private commercial, operation. We need that clarified. We need details from the remuneration committee of the bonuses paid. Up to €14,200 was paid to senior executives. We also need to know the bonuses paid to Ms Kerins. We have not been provided with Mr. Flannery's pension arrangements and whether an abatement rule applies in respect of his consultancy work as is the case in the public sector.

We intend to schedule our next meeting with Rehab for Thursday, 10 April. We will issue an invitation to Rehab to ensure the chairman of the board, Ms Kerins, the remuneration committee, Mr. Flannery and the director of finance attend. This morning the committee agreed to schedule that meeting and invite the witnesses, as recorded. Is that agreed? Agreed.