Missing file: Copies of the documents in a key file on nursing home charges prepared for the Attorney General by the Department of Health in 2004 were made available to the Travers inquiry, the Department of Health insisted yesterday.
The file, which was never sent to the Attorney General, had disappeared, the Travers inquiry found, and it is still missing.
It was prepared by a group of civil servants for department secretary general Michael Kelly, following a meeting in December 2003 in the Gresham Hotel at which it was decided the AG's advice should be sought on the legality of imposing charges for long-stay care on elderly medical-card holders in public nursing homes.
Mr Kelly told the Travers inquiry he recalled reading the file at the end of January/early February 2004. It had been presented to him for his signature.
He believed he sent it to the then health minister Micheál Martin's office because of its legal, financial and political consequences.However, Mr Martin claims he never received it.
Given that the file is missing, it cannot be established if Mr Martin's office received it or not. It would have been stamped by the Minister's office if it arrived there.
The report said there was no documentation showing the file being logged in or out of either man's office.
It was only when the present Minister for Health, Mary Harney, was asked about the legality of nursing home charges in the Dáil last October that it emerged the file had never been sent to the Attorney General.
When Ms Harney ordered that the Attorney General be consulted, a copy of the documents which would have been in the missing file was retrieved from the civil servants who prepared them for Mr Kelly in early 2004. Civil servants normally keep copies of letters they prepared for others, the Department of Health said.
The Travers report noted that the letter and background papers sent to the Attorney General last October following Ms Harney's intervention "were essentially those prepared in January 2004".
The copies of the documentation contained in the missing file were made public by the Department of Health yesterday.
It said so many documents were provided for former head of Forfás John Travers, who compiled the report, it would have been impossible to append them all to his report.
