A former HSE executive has claimed he saves the Government hundreds of thousands of euro despite receiving more than €1million in consultancy fees since retiring.
Former North Western Health Board CEO Pat Harvey was forced to retire in 2005.
However in 2006 he set up a consultancy firm which has been awarded numerous HSE contracts.
However the Letterkenny consultant says he never sought or tendered for any of the consultancy work he received.
“I want to dismiss the suggestion that I gained advantage (by being a former HSE employee).
“I can’t tender; when management and unions ring me up. When I was invited to chair the Croke Park agreement, it was the same scenario.
“They want someone they can trust, who brings balance – so I got a phone call from the Department of Finance; I get a phone call from a union.
“If I was sitting back from this and I wasn’t personally involved, I’d say there is something fundamentally wrong with someone who gets a severance package and yet who gets additionally money from the public service. I don’t disagree with that principle.
“I happen to be somebody who didn’t have a choice but to leave and I got what everybody was getting in the circumstances. I started up a consultancy – people asked me to do work.
“Do I turn around and say I am going to be biased and not do work for the public sector? I am not so sure that I should.
“This is a public service and a HSE issue, not a Pat Harvey one. If they believe the public service benefits and there is an advantage in having someone like Pat Harvey coming in and helping to resolve a dispute which is complex, which in the background could be costing hundreds of thousands.
“The country is awash with people who exit the public service and go into business or who are employed by others who then charge the public service for their time,” he insisted.
When Mr Harvey left the HSE he received a once-off “severance gratuity” of €194,655.49 and a €60,934 “ex-gratia payment” given to former regional chief executives.
He also receives an annual pension of €64,855.16.
Since retiring Mr Harvey, chairman of the Croke Park agreement’s health service group, has received:
* €389,130.90 pension.
* €295,526 in non-tendered contracts from a group he used to chair.
* €255,589.49 in one-off severance pay.
* Just under €200,000 in HSE projects tendered for since 2007.
* An annual salary of €20,520 as chair of the implementation body on health-sector reform.
However Mr Harvey told Highland Radio that his fees are not just “dreamt up.”
“The fees that I get are not something that are dreamt up. They are agreed in advance.
“Part of the fees I get are maybe fees that I pass on to others who provide some work.
“If I got €100,000 over a period I might have handed over €35,000, €40,000 or €50,000 of that there to others.
“If you take my pension and multiply it by six or seven years; if you take my lump sum; if you take what the consultancy; if you take what’s paid to others, you can come up with a figure of a million,” he said.
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