Stephen Donnelly (Wicklow, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

It was a year ago and I was not satisfied with the pace of the process, which is why I intervened and for a move to a self-assessment model. However, while we all would have liked the payment to have gone out to everybody quicker than it did, I have no doubt that if the HSE had moved off its own bat, at a pace where there would have been significant errors made, there would have been double payments made. For example, let us say you had a clinician working in a HSE hospital and working in a nursing home as well, he or she is due to get the payment once. If double payments had been made or if payments had been made to people who were not eligible based on the amount of time they had worked or where they had been, I have no doubt that the Committee of Public Accounts would be pulling in those same HSE officials and lambasting them for not treating public money with the care that is required. While I agree that it needed to move quicker - and that is why I intervened - we need to be honest that we have a role in all of this as well. HSE senior managers are genuinely cautious because of the political reaction to any errors they might make while trying to implement Government policy.

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