Eamon Gilmore (Dún Laoghaire, Labour) | Oireachtas source

The first thing I wish to deal with is the issue of public confidence in charities. It needs to be made clear to people who contribute to charities or people who are contemplating contributing to charities that the act is being cleaned up and that the problems identified in respect of top-ups or excessive payments - whatever we call it - to senior management staff and senior executives in charitable organisations are being dealt with. They are being dealt with at the initiative of the Minister for Health, who asked the HSE to conduct an audit of these organisations following the Health Information Quality Authority report on Tallaght hospital in 2012. It was the audit of the section 38 agencies which identified the problems and which brought to light the various top-up payments, pension arrangements and all the other matters that have come into the public domain.

That audit now is being followed up by meetings that are being conducted by senior managers from the Health Service Executive, HSE, with the agencies concerned. The chief executive officer of the HSE is meeting the chairpersons of the section 38 agencies to make clear to them what is expected of them in respect of compliance with public pay policy. As I stated earlier, the mechanism it is intended to use is to require each of the section 38 agencies to sign a compliance statement. In other words, the chairman of the board of each agency, as well as another director of the board, will be obliged to sign a compliance statement that will be submitted to the HSE making clear that the agency in question is complying with public pay policy. As a consequence, members of the public can have confidence that when they donate their money, they know where their money is going and that there is transparency in respect of the administration, the management and the payment of senior executives in such organisations.

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