The Secretary General of the Department of Health Robert Watt has said he did not allocate €20 million in funding to provide for the abandoned proposed secondment of former chief medical officer Dr Tony Holohan to Trinity College Dublin.
Last April, controversy arose about the arrangement when it was revealed that the post would be an open-ended secondment funded by the Department of Health via the Health Research Board.
Dr Holohan decided not to proceed with the move and left the public service a few months later.
Today, Mr Watt told the Oireachtas Finance Committee it should have been handled better and there were issues around communication.
Sinn Féin's finance spokesperson Pearse Doherty asked whether Mr Watt had the authority to make a funding commitment of €20 million over ten years, channelled through the Health Research Board.
He said that the letter of intent signed by Mr Watt on 16 March last year committed to doing so.
Mr Doherty said: "It was a commitment to make an annual ringfenced allocation of €2 million for the duration of the secondment which was ten years.
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"It was a commitment through the HRB, which had no knowledge and didn't authorise this."
Mr Watt denied that he had authorised such funding but said that he was instead setting out a "policy intent".
"I didn't approve an allocation. I set out our intent to commit more money for research funding," Mr Watt said.
"It wasn't an approval and Trinity College knew very well that as a public body that ... it wasn't a legal agreement."
The independent review by former head of the Institute of Directors Maura Quinn found that substantial funding for the move bypassed all the accepted protocols.
Mr Watt told the Committee that he did not accept most of the findings in the Quinn report including a finding that Mr Holohan should not have been involved in arranging his own secondment.
"I reject most of the findings in the report. For the avoidance of doubt - no point in suggesting otherwise," he said.
Fianna Fáil TD Jim O'Callaghan said that the fact that the person benefitting was doing negotiations on his own behalf underlined the "casual nature" of the arrangement.
Mr Watt said he did not accept that.
Mr Watt was also asked about a conflict in evidence in the report where the chief of staff to Tánaiste Micheál Martin, Deirdre Gillane, strongly disputed his account that she knew details of the proposed secondment.
He said he accepted Ms Gillane's version of events that she was not aware.
On discussions with former secretary general of the Department of the Taoiseach Martin Fraser, Mr Watt indicated that they had differing views.
Mr Watt was also asked about why the Minister for Health Stephen Donnelly was not aware of all of the details.
He said the Minister was aware of the broad details but a corrupted system meant he did not receive a detailed email on the subject.
"The Minister was away in America and his machine was hacked," Mr Watt said.
"There was actually an email with a one-page attachment setting out the two million but we couldn't send.
"Four or five days later, the machine got up and the Minister was available again".
But he said that between the time of the letter of intent and when it came to the actual legal commitment to fund, the Minster would have been involved.
Sinn Féin's Rose Conway-Walsh said that it all seemed rather strange and Mr Watt responded saying "no it's not".
Later committee chairman John McGuinness clashed with Mr Watt, criticising his responses.
"Your answers fall way short of the standard that I would expect from a senior civil servant," Mr McGuinness said.
Mr Watt disputed that assertion adding that he was answering questions in good faith.
"I'm not sure if it's appropriate for you to comment as you have just done," he said.
Read more: Holohan should not have been involved in funding talks, review finds
Donnelly does not intend to take further action on Holohan report
Meanwhile, Minister Donnelly backed the account of a former chef de cabinet in the Taoiseach's office in a row with Mr Watt over the failed attempt to move Dr Holohan on secondment.
Mr Donnelly told the committe that he does not intend to take any further action on the matter after an independent report into the issue by Ms Quinn found the proposed funding mechanism and the absence of detail did not meet the accepted norms of scrutiny, transparency and accountability.
The report also found a lack of formal consultation with the Taoiseach, the Minister for Health, the Government and the Department of Public Expenditure throughout the process.
Róisín Shorthall TD told the committee that she was "concerned" by the minister's approach to the report.
She said the minister spoke of the future and of "learnings" and asked: "Would you accept you can't learn lessons, unless there is accountability?
"Your secretary general took a decision on spending a substantial amount of public money without the proper protocols or approvals. We know from the report that your secretary general's account of events is at complete variance form the account of events from the then Taoiseach's chef de cabinet.
"Deirdre Gillane's comments were extremely trenchant, she didn't hold back. She talked about your secretary general’s account being grossly inaccurate, she said the claims were wholly without foundation. Whose account do you believe?"
Mr Donnelly said he believed "the report" and said he "agrees with the position in the report that Ms Gillane is correct".
He added that it is clear that Ms Gillane was told "very late in the day".
Ms Shorthall said if the minister believes Ms Gillane's account of events which is at variance with the account of the Secretary General at the Department of Health then "there needs to be some account for that huge disparity".
Mr Donnelly said the accountability lies in the fact that "the proposed secondment did not happen".
"Several things were done, a report was put together by the secretary general at the time, I commissioned an independent report by Ms Quinn into this and she has provided that and thirdly I am here today, the secretary general is before committee later.
"The secretary general for the Taoiseach office was before committee last year, the secretary general for health was before committees last year. I would argue that that is a very substantial amount of accountability and transparency."
Sinn Féin TD David Cullinane called the entire episode as "bizarre and unseemly" and said it should not be allowed to happen again.
"Established processes were not followed," he said.
"There was an informality to the process and that informality has led to a lot of problems."
Mr Donnelly said he believed that everyone involved was acting in good faith and that "the proposed secondment would have been very valuable".
He added that it was his clear view that everyone was acting in good faith and trying to do the right thing.
With additional reporting by Sinead Spain
