Department of Health Secretary General Robert Watt has suggested that Minister Stephen Donnelly was not made aware of funding for Dr Tony Holohan’s botched secondment because his “computer was hacked”.
During a fiery Oireachtas Finance Committee meeting, Mr Watt rejected most of the findings of a report into the secondment.
An external report, conducted by Maura Quinn, examined the circumstances around how the proposed role was developed.
READ MORE: Stephen Donnelly backs Micheál Martin's chief over Robert Watt in Holohan row
It found that Dr Holohan “should not have been exclusively personally involved in the negotiation of potential University Partners nor should any possible research funding have been linked to his possible secondment to a university”.
However, appearing in front of the Oireachtas Finance Committee on Wednesday afternoon, Mr Watt said he “rejects most of the findings of the report”.
Last April, much of the controversy about the secondment centred on the fact that the three coalition leaders and Health Minister Stephen Donnelly were not informed of the move.
However, Mr Watt told the committee that attempts were made to tell Mr Donnelly but that a “hacking” prevented this.
He said: “The Minister was away in America and his computer was hacked.
“There was actually an email with a one-page attachment setting out the €2 million and saying, ‘Look, we're gonna do this’.
“But we couldn’t send [it]. Four or five days later, the machine got up and the Minister was available again. We didn’t communicate with him. It was a technical issue.
“There was a note. Our intention was to share it with the Minister. Unfortunately, he was away, his machine got corrupted and it slipped our mind to give the details.”
When asked about the hack mentioned by Mr Watt by the Irish Mirror, a spokesman for Minister Donnelly said: "In March 2022 (during the St. Patrick’s Day trip to the United States) Minister Donnelly and his officials were advised not to use their devices – particularly for email – due to concerns about a cyber security risk."
During a fiery row with Sinn Féin’s Pearse Doherty, Mr Watt denied that he “approved” an allocation of €2m a year to Trinity in a “letter of intent”, which was sent in March 2022.
“I set out our intent to commit more money for research funding,” he argued.
“We were committed in the letter to finalise an agreement. We were committed to appointing people to finalise the details.
“At that stage, the Minister would have been involved before we got to the stage of signing a legal agreement.”
When asked again whether he had the authority to allocate €2m a year to the Health Research Board (HRB) to fund the Trinity secondment, he insisted that he did not approve the funding.
The letter of intent read: “The Department of Health commits to make an annual ring-fenced allocation of €2M for the duration of the secondment.”
Mr Watt also said that he disagreed with Ms Quinn’s finding that his actions and the funding allocation “bypassed all of the accepted protocols for research funding and was linked atypically to one named individual”.
He argued that the report did not state which protocols were not followed.
Mr Watt asked Aontú’s Peadar Tóibin: “Could you point out to me please the protocols to which you are referring and which part of the protocol I have bypassed?”
The Quinn report contained a submission from Micheál Martin’s Chief of Staff Deirdre Gillane strenuously denying that she had been told about the secondment by the then-Secretary General of the Department of the Taoiseach Martin Fraser. She said that she was not aware of the plan until the media contacted her. Mr Watt said that he accepted this account.
Mr Watt’s appearance at the committee was lambasted by committee chair John McGuinness, who said his answers “fell well short” of what was expected of a Secretary General. He also accused Mr Watt of being “arrogantly dismissive” of Ms Quinn’s report.
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