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A significant row has broken out between RTÉ and the Department of Health after its secretary general strongly criticised a programme broadcast in March by the station.
The programme detailed allegations made by a whistleblower regarding information kept in relation to children with special needs who had taken legal cases against the State.
In an appearance at an Oireachtas committee today, Robert Watt repeatedly criticised the RTÉ programme and claimed the broadcaster did not offer the department a chance to appear on the programme to respond to allegations.
Mr Watt said the practices alleged would not have been ethical but that “they didn’t take place”. He said the department had “comprehensively addressed” the allegations made as “not true”. Mr Watt said although the department did not claim it had never made mistakes, there was “no basis” for the substantive allegations made in the RTÉ programme.
He said he regrets the department was not “more forceful” in its engagement with RTÉ before the broadcast.
“We should have been more forceful with them, because I really don’t believe that the programme could stand up.”
Asked about a phone call he made to RTÉ’s director general, Dee Forbes, before the programme aired, Mr Watt said he wanted to ensure Ms Forbes “understood the gravity of the allegations” and to make clear the department “didn’t believe the allegations were correct”. He said the department was reflecting on what it would do now, and had not waived any of its rights.
In a statement posted on Twitter, RTÉ head of news Jon Williams said the station “stands by its journalism”.
“It’s untrue to suggest that the Department of Health was not invited to participate by RTÉ investigates,” he wrote, outlining that the team wrote the the department two weeks ahead of the broadcast to put the allegations to them.
“It’s also untrue to say there is no basis for what RTÉ Investigates reported. The truth matters. The point remains that the Department held sensitive information on vulnerable individuals that can only have originated in confidential consultations those individuals and their families had with medical professionals”
He said the Department of Health confirmed it did hold such information during today’s session.
Mr Watt defended the practice of sharing information between departments who are jointly named as defendants in legal cases – one of the practices highlighted by the programme.
He said there are ways for “various information to be collated and shared” and defended it as a “longstanding practice” which makes “administrative sense” and is lawful. “It’s the only practical way in which I can see us managing these cases effectively.”
Both Mr Watt and other senior officials repeatedly stated that information kept on file that might be seen as sensitive was largely provided by plaintiffs themselves during the course of litigation.
However, it was acknowledged that in at least one instance, some information was provided by a HSE clinician to supply information that the department said it had not sought.
The secretary general defended the gathering of information using “service updates” – reports provided to the department by the HSE on engagement with and use of health services by individuals involved in litigation. He said they were part of a process “to bring to finality cases that had not been closed and were dormant”. He conceded that “there is information that could be deemed sensitive”on the files, but said:
“There’s a suggestion here there’s something untoward, or inappropriate, or underhand going on here.. There’s not”. The service reports were also featured during the RTÉ programme. Mr Watt told Sinn Féin health spokesman David Cullinane: “If your characterisation of what was happening here was correct, it would trouble us. Of course it would, but it’s not”.
Mr Watt said it would be true to say the department did not seek information from clinicians or schools directly or indirectly but instead sought updates from HSE managers.
Asked by Social Democrats co-leader Roisin Shortall about a template letter that went along with such requests, which explicitly stated families or solicitors should not be contacted about the request, he said “that probably should have been worded better than it is,” saying it is “not an attempt to seek information without the consent of parents”. Mr Watt said there is no basis for an independent inquiry into how the Department of Health handled legal cases involving children with special needs, the department’s most senior civil servant has told an Oireachtas Committee.
He said he didn’t believe there was any “prima facie basis for an independent inquiry”, and he said there was “nothing untoward” in how the department had behaved.
“If Dáil committees want to investigate, that’s their business,” he said but added there was no grounds he could see for an inquiry “based on evidence that we have. If others have other evidence they want to bring to bear, that might change it”.
He said his view was there was no “basis for it under the various statutes that are there”.
It is understood that the committee will meet in private next Tuesday to consider the next steps in its examination of the matter.
The Oireachtas committee last week heard evidence in private from whistleblower Shane Corr, a department official whose protected disclosure informed the programme broadcast in March.
Several times, Mr Watt said he could not address specific allegations made during that private session. “If you wanted us to be party to the discussion you had with the whistleblower last week, you should have invited us,” he said.
Senator Martin Conway asked whether there was a unit in the department “storing and preparing information for potential legal challenges”, while Gino Kenny TD asked if representations made by Ministers and TDs were kept in a database and “searched across Government departments”.