Travers Report: Presentations, Vol. Number 53
Deputy Gormley: Does the Tánaiste agree that the file tracking system in place in the Department which we visited yesterday was slipshod? Is she satisfied that a better system has been put in place?
I wish to return to the matter of the file given to the person who is now the Tánaiste’s private secretary. I understand the civil servant in question has a clear recollection of the matter. While he has said he cannot recall the event in detail, does the Tánaiste agree there is a greater degree of certainty on his part? That is why this evidence is crucial. In terms of us making a judgment on that, one would have to believe the person who has the greater recollection and the greater certainty.
Deputy Harney: Deputy Gormley asked me about the Department and I know members were there yesterday. We have a new Secretary General who has set up a new division to deal with the elderly and eligibility issues. He is reorganising the management team in the Department. We hope to move from Hawkins House and those that were there yesterday will have seen that it is not an appropriate facility for a modern Civil Service. In that context we need to get outside advice regarding modern technology that would enable us to track issues in a better way than the file based system we have at present. On my desk at the moment there must be 50 or 60 files. It is not true that my current private secretary is the person referred to. The person does work in my office and is the number two there but I will not decide that one is right and another is wrong or value one person’s view higher than another’s.
Deputy Gormley: One person is more certain than the other, clearly.
Deputy Harney: We set up a process to inquire into this and it is only fair to accept its outcome and the judgment of the person who was asked to carry it out. Mr. Travers is coming later.
Deputy Gormley: One person has a very clear recollection of it and the other does not. Surely that tells the Tánaiste something, does it not?
Deputy Harney: It is a matter for the Deputy to talk to the persons involved.
Deputy Gormley: We have talked to some of them but we cannot talk to everyone.
Deputy Harney: The Deputy should talk to whomever he feels it is appropriate to talk to.
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Chairman: Deputy Gormley made the point that huge emphasis was placed by the person who said they saw something, but greater emphasis was placed in terms of the person who did not see something. Less than 24 hours ago, we went to that office and people have a notion of there being a large number of staff there.
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Deputy Gormley: I thank Mr. Travers for coming before the committee again today. On page 15, paragraph 4, of his transcript it is stated that “The Department had indicated elsewhere to me”. However, earlier I believe he said “The Department had not indicated to me”. Is the version in the transcript correct?
Mr. Travers: The transcript is correct.
Deputy Gormley: On the question of the advice given on whether the charges were illegal and whether, as recollected by the relevant civil servant, there was a need to change the legislation, Mr. Travers stated that he was informed that such charges were legally defensible. In the defence he put forward, Mr. Travers has traced the history of the advice provided over many years. Has he seen any documentation or evidence to suggest that officials believed, at any stage, that the charges were illegal?
Mr. Travers: I refer the Deputy to the section in the report that deals with an internal departmental memorandum of 1982.
Deputy Gormley: What is the reference?
Mr. Travers: I do not have the page number but paragraph 3.16 states “there is no legal basis whatever for informally changing a person’s status from full to limited eligibility”.
Deputy Gormley: I wish to return to the question of political responsibility. In layman’s terms, the Minister is the captain of the ship and is obliged to go down with it. Does Mr. Travers agree that the former Minister, Deputy Martin — who we might describe as the captain of the Titanic— got into the lifeboat with the women and children and then complained afterwards that no one told him about the iceberg? There is a gap here between political responsibility and the maladministration to which Mr. Travers has referred. I appreciate his coming here today and offering a very good rebuttal but there is no question that the gap to which I refer exists.
Chairman: Can Mr. Travers take that bank of questions first?
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Deputy Gormley: To follow on from what Deputy Twomey said, Mr. Travers is saying there is an inconsistency in that the phrase “the need to change legislation” is inconsistent with the view within the Department at the time. Is that correct?
Mr. Travers: Yes.
Deputy Gormley: Can Mr. Travers comment on the annexe covering long-stay charges — the summary for deliberation?
Mr. Travers: What page is that?
Deputy Gormley: It is in the annexe. It is a draft. It is in Annexe 6.
Deputy Devins: Is the Deputy referring to the report or the presentation?
Deputy Gormley: I am dealing first with Mr. Travers’s rebuttal, which is on page 15, and also with Annexe 6. The annexe covers the current legal deficiencies and paragraph 1.2 contains the phrase “the need for change”. It is not a big distance to move from saying that to saying “the need to change the legislation”. If one put the two of those together, that is what one would get. Is it tenable that is precisely what the civil servant saw?
Mr. Travers: That there was a need to change the legislation?
Deputy Gormley: It is not that inconsistent, is it?
Mr. Travers: That would conflict with many other things that have been said, namely, that they were of the view that this was a matter that could be dealt with in the context of the wider eligibility issue and that there was no particular need at that point to bring in legislation. The Deputy may recall that a draft memorandum and heads of Bill were prepared in respect of this issue in 2002 and it was decided that there was no need to run with it at that point in time.
Deputy Gormley: This is dated 15 December 2003. Therefore, it is closer to the period concerned. It seems entirely consistent——
Mr. Travers: It would have been the same memo for Government-——
Deputy Gormley: Mr. Travers takes my point that this seems entirely consistent with the recollection of the civil servant. The phrase used, with which Mr. Travers finds an inconsistency, is “the need to change the legislation”.
Mr. Travers: The point I was trying to make is that if one looks at the documents — the covering letter, the background note and so on — that were sent to the Attorney General at the time, one would note that there is absolutely nothing in them about the need to change the legislation. Questions, seeking the advice of the Attorney General, were asked. There is absolutely nothing in any of them about putting a proposition to the Secretary General that the legislation required or needed to be changed. That is the point I am making. However, the document was described as a set of documents about the need to change the legislation. That was a significant point for the reasons I described earlier. There is all sorts of significance attached to a belief that the Department might have held in regard to the need to change the legislation in advance of having received any advice from the Attorney General on it. In a sense, I do not need to go into the implications of that; they are fairly clear, if people want to draw them.