Róisín Shortall (Dublin North West, Labour)
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Question 160: To ask the Minister for Health and Children if she will provide details of all bodies, committees or groups under her Department or any of the agencies within her Department's remit associated with social partnership established in the past 15 years; the details of all funding allocated to these bodies in that period; the details of all funding provided to social partnership bodies or persons associated with such bodies in the period and the purpose of these allocations. [40715/10]

Mary Harney (Dublin Mid West, Independent)
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In common with all Government Departments, my Department has set up and developed partnership structures to engage management, unions and staff at all levels in progressing the modernisation agenda of the civil service and as a means of involving staff in the ongoing business of the Department, including identifying and addressing organisational and work-related issues and challenges generally. While these partnership structures have been involved in the administration of certain schemes in my Department, e.g. the Merit Award Scheme, no funding was ever directly allocated to the different partnership groups.

As was the case with each sector of the public service, the health sector was required to establish a performance verification group, the Health Sector Performance Verification Group (HSPVG), in order to verify compliance to commitments under the relevant national partnership agreements (initially under Sustaining Progress and then under Towards 2016). This Department paid a total of €127,799.94 in fees and expenses to the Chairs and independent members of the HSPVG between 2003 and 2008. The work of this group has since concluded and is no longer in operation.

The Health Services National Partnership Forum (HSNPF) was also established as a joint management / trade union steering committee for workplace partnership in the Irish health service. The HSNPF was established in 1999 on foot of the provisions of Partnership 2000, the national agreement on social partnership then in place. It continued to promote a partnership approach to change and problem solving in the health services under the subsequent national partnership agreements, the Programme for Prosperity and Fairness, Sustaining Progress and Towards 2016. The Forum was originally funded by way of a grant from this Department through certain former Health Boards.

At the request of the Secretary General, in the context of the review of the SKILL programme, my Department has prepared a report on travel associated with Management-Union Partnership activities and in which Department officials participated; and Funding for Management-Union Partnership activities other than SKILL. A full copy of this report is available on my Department's website, www.dohc.ie. According to this report, the following amounts of relevant funding were identified between the years 2000 and 2004:

It should also be noted that the report clarified that the above funding supported a range of activities by bodies such as the Office for Health Management and the Health Service Employers Agency, including, but not confined to management-union partnership. It was not possible to reliably separate management-union partnership funding from funding for other purposes. Since the establishment of the HSE, under the Health Act 2004, the Health Vote became the responsibility of the Executive from 2005 onwards. As such, I have referred your query in relation to funding of the Forum from 2005 to the HSE for direct reply.