THE BOARD OF Our Lady’s Children’s Hospital, Crumlin tonight released a statement acknowledging that the Chief Executive Lorcan Birthistle receives remuneration funded from on-site commercial activities.

The hospital wanted to reiterate however that no charitable donations have been used to pay this allowance.

Remuneration

It’s been reported that the hospital’s chief executive received total remuneration of more than €140,000 of which €30,000 was from a “privately funded allowance”.

Following the board’s monthly meeting tonight, the board stated that they were “fully engaged” with the HSE in relation the matter of senior staff top-ups.

They stated that the “contracted remuneration of the Chief Executive has full board approval since his appointment and is fully compliant with PAYE and other statutory deductions”.

Controversy

The statement went on to say that the board “acknowledges the concern that this controversy caused the children, parents, staff and supporters of the hospital” but said that no charitable donations have been used to pay this allowance.

They added:

The board previously attempted to secure approval of the health authorities for an appropriate remuneration level for the Chief Executive.

The Board believes this can now be achieved in accordance with the recommendations of the HSE Internal Audit Report and this will be pursued directly with the HSE.

The statement comes following today’s discussion at the Public Accounts Committee in which the HSE chief, Tony O’Brien said that 30 hospital agencies described themselves as compliant with public pay policy, while 12 agencies described themselves as non compliant.

However, he added that of those that described themselves as compliant, 15 agencies were paying remuneration that was not compliant to the public pay policy.

Only 7 agencies were found to be compliant with public pay policy while a further 7 were found to be paying remuneration that was non complaint. One agency had written to the HSE asking for formal approval that non-compliant payment be made.

O’Brien said he considered any additional payment, either from public funds or from private funds to be in breach of HSE pay policy.

Read: HSE says some ‘top-ups’ for hospital executives date back to 1996>

Read: All Government departments expected to respond on top-up payments by start of December>