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Travers Report issues

Date released: 17.06.2005

Ombudsman's submission to the Oireachtas Joint Committee on Health and Children in relation to issues dealt with in the Travers Report.

The Ombudsman, Ms Emily O'Reilly, has today published her submission to the Oireachtas Joint Committee on Health and Children. The submission discusses issues raised in the Travers Report which are relevant to the previous Ombudsman's Report on Nursing Home Subventions, which was published and presented to the Oireachtas in 2001.

The submission, which may be viewed on the Ombudsman website, www.ombudsman.gov.ie, deals with two issues of concern to the Ombudsman.

1. Legal Advice and other evidence not passed on the the Ombudsman

It emerges from the Travers Report that the Department of Health and Children had legal advice and other evidence relating to the question of the entitlement of medical card holders to long-stay hospital services, which it did not pass on to the Ombudsman's Office during this Office's examination of this issue over successive years.

Disclosure of this information would have established, in the language of section 4 of the Ombudsman Act, 1980, that the Department's actions (and those of the health boards in reliance on the Department's position) were being "taken without proper authority".

Had the previous Ombudsman been aware that the analysis he was offering in relation to the entitlement of medical card holders to long-stay hospital services was no more than that already provided to the Department by its own and health board legal advisers, he would have reported to the Oireachtas on the matter both more fully and more definitively. Had the matter been resolved in 1991- 1992, when there were intensive discussions between the Department and the Ombudsman, a very substantial portion of the overpayments (now required to be refunded) would never have arisen.

2. Delay in addressing failures of government identified in the Ombudsman's Report

Chapter 8 of the Ombudsman's Nursing Homes Report identified system failures within government and commented that these failures had contributed to the problems which arose in relation to nursing homes subventions. The events of late 2004 within the Department of Health and Children are further evidence of those failures of government and the Ombudsman notes with regret that in the four years since the publication of that report, it appears that no action has been taken to address these problems For further information contact:

Michael Brophy , Office of the Ombudsman, 18 Lower Leeson Street, Dublin 2. Tel:- (01)6395639, e-mail: michael_brophy@ombudsman.gov.ie or Matthew Merrigan, Tel:- (01) 6395635, e-mail: Matthew Merrigan@ombudsman.gov.ie

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