The former chairman of the Central Remedial Clinic (CRC) has said his board was effectively dismissed at a few hours notice last December.

Hamilton Goulding said the board was told at a meeting in HSE headquarters on December 13th that unless it resigned immediately, funding provided by the health authority would be withdrawn from the CRC.

“The resignations were tendered directly because the board’s position was untenable, its primary concern being not to allow any impediment to the continued funding by the HSE of the CRC, which would effectively shut down the clinic.”

The board stepped down on foot of controversy following revelations surrounding the use of donations provided by the public to fund, in part, the pay of senior executives at the organisation.

Mr Goulding told the Public Accounts Committee that he rejected the implication, set out in the recent report of the interim administrator appointed by the HSE to run the CRC, that it had been “virtually abandoned by all its previous governors, company secretary and chief executive officer”.

He had met the then chairman after the meeting with the HSE who had told him: “Ham, it is over, the board has to go or funding will cease.”

Mr Goulding said he was "shocked" when he found out about the €242,000 salary of former chief executive of the CRC Paul Kiely. He thought the figure would be half that.

The overall pay was composed of funding provided by the HSE and about €135,000 generated from private CRC sources.

He had put in train a process to deal with this while respecting contractual constraints.

He defended the €741,000 severance package provided to Mr Kiely on his departure a year ago. He said it was “ a normal commercial buy-out” of a contract and indicated that it had saved the CRC a substantial amount of money and avoided potential conflict.