WHEN Leo Varadkar was health minister in 2015 he brought a memo to Cabinet proposing to secretly remove redress entitlements of family members affected by the hepatitis C scandal.
The revelation – contained in leaked confidential documents obtained by the Irish Mail on Sunday – will heap further pressure on the Taoiseach as the Government comes under fire over its continuing litigation strategy that pits the firepower of the State against some of its most vulnerable citizens.
According to a leaked Government document, Mr Varadkar proposed making savings of between €260m and €1bn from a draft law that would have made a series of cuts to Hepatitis C compensation measures in May 2015 when he was minister for health.
Six months earlier, in November 2014, Mr Varadkar told the Irish Times that his department had no plans to make any changes to the Hepatitis C Compensation scheme.
The proposed cuts outlined in the May 2015 memo involved legislative changes to limit various entitlements and to exclude dependent relatives of those infected completely from the scheme in the future.
To ensure that news of the planned measures did not spark a new wave of claims from dependants, the Memorandum for Government stressed the proposal must remain secret until the Bill was published – and then proposed that the publication date of the Bill would be the new deadline for receipt of claims.
It states: ‘The Minister for Health considers it important that the drafting of the legislation remains secret to protect the financial interests of the State.’
Echoing the controversial litigation strategy pursued by the State to limit refunds to people who were illegally charged nursing home fees – first revealed by the MoS last week – the document warns: ‘Public knowledge of possible changes to the compensation arrangements could encourage early compensation claims.’
Ultimately, however, the plans did not proceed, and the terms of the compensation tribunal remain unaffected.
The latest revelations come as the current Attorney General prepares a report on the State’s continuing controversial litigation strategy for the Cabinet on Tuesday. The issue will also be debated in the Dáil.
Senior Cabinet sources who spoke to the MoS about the deepening controversy this weekend said Government leaders plan to ‘tough it out’ in the hope public anger will dissipate with time.
Explaining the thinking, one minister said: ‘The issue does not have a public face. Cervical cancer had Vicki Phelan. Hepatitis C had Brigid McCole.
‘This does not have a public face that can be put on the Six One News,’ they said.
Another senior Government source added: ‘It is not pretty, it looks terrible but the plan is to hang tough and see it out. The public will forget.’
However, these sources were speaking without knowledge of the latest revelation.
The Taoiseach has defended the approach to litigation aimed at limiting the State’s potential liability on private nursing home charges, describing it as, ‘a legitimate legal strategy by the Government’.
However, Department of Health whistleblower Shane Corr – whose protected disclosures to the MoS have lifted the lid on the State’s legal strategy – has challenged the Government to explain why none of the private home care litigation cases ever came to court.
Instead, these cases were all settled at the point of discovery, when the State would have been obliged to hand over documents. ‘This comes down to the issue of discovery. What were they afraid of in discovery?’ Mr Corr asked.
Mr Corr was speaking after it emerged on Friday that two members of the current Cabinet, Simon Harris and Helen McEntee, gave the green light to the continued ‘deny, delay, and settle before discovery’ strategy following a review in 2017.
Separate documents show the State’s legal strategy was founded on a distinct fear that ‘a number of problematic documents’ relating to the 1993 nursing home subvention could be released under any discovery order that might be granted by a court.
Another leaked document shows how a desperate Department of Health agreed to offer nearly 100% of a claim in a contested case because it had missed a discovery deadline.
In response to queries from the MoS, a spokesman for the Taoiseach this weekend confirmed Mr Varadkar’s proposal to change the terms of the Hepatitis C and HIV Compensation Tribunal was considered by Cabinet members at the time.
The spokesman stressed the proposal was ‘considered in 2014 and 2015 when health budgets were being cut due to the deep recession the country was enduring at the time’.
They added: ‘Ireland was in a bailout, the IMF was monitoring public finances and very difficult decisions were being taken monthly.
‘The then Minister for Health had a duty to consider all options for savings that would not adversely affect patients in need of medical care.
‘This was one of those decisions. It would have not affected the entitlement to compensation of anyone infected with Hepatitis C or HIV.’
Mr Varadkar’s spokesman said resources at the time ‘were focused on patients, including the provision of direct-acting anti-viral drugs for Hepatitis C patients with the greatest clinical need, such as the life-saving Sovaldi medication’.
He added: ‘The Minister ultimately decided not to proceed with the proposal. He discussed it with senior Cabinet colleagues who agreed with him that the proposal should not proceed and there was no Cabinet decision.’
Ireland exited the three-year IMF bailout programme on December 15, 2013.
The Department of Health’s budget was not cut in 2014 or in 2015.
Conversely, the expenditure on health rose from €13.4bn in 2013, to €13.7bn in 2014, to 14.3bn in 2015, according to Government figures.
Asked about the secret nature of the proposal to make the date of the publication of the Bill the final deadline for accepting compensation claims for Hepatitis C families, a Department of Health spokesman said that it was ‘normal practice’ for Government memos ‘to be prepared on a confidential/ secret basis’.`
