The only chief executive currently in place in the six hospital groups set up by Minister for Health James Reilly may be leaving to take up a similar post in the North.
Bill Maher, chief executive of the West/North-West Hospitals Group, has been offered the job of head of the Belfast Health and Social Care Trust. Mr Maher is understood not to have decided whether he will accept the post, which has a salary of €210,000, or €40,000 more than he currently receives.
Mr Maher was seconded from his role as chief operations officer of St Vincent’s Hospital in January 2012 for a three-year period. His secondment arrangements, which include an annual detention allowance of €10,000 to offset the cost of relocating to Galway from Carlow, were approved “as an exceptional matter” and did not represent a change in overall public pay policy, Dr Reilly told the Dáil earlier this year. The arrangement is subject to annual review by the Department of Public Expenditure, with the latest due shortly.
Earlier this week, Dr Reilly said Mr Maher had been “rebuked” by the director general of the HSE, Tony O’Brien, over the group’s failure to put out to tender a contract for the review of maternity services in the west and northwest.
Group chairman Noel Daly resigned last week after it emerged that he failed to disclose his shareholding in the consultancy which was awarded the contract.The same controversy had led to calls by Opposition politicians for Mr Maher to resign. The controversial review produced by Mr Daly’s company, which proposed the closure of up to four maternity units, has been shelved.
The process to hire a chief executive of the Belfast Health and Social Care Trust began before this controversy. The trust has an annual budget of approximately £1 billion making it one of the biggest healthcare jobs in the UK.
Mr Maher’s departure would be another blow for Dr Reilly’s plans to introduce chief executives of regional hospital groups. The HSE has been unable to fill these key positions at the salaries offered, which were reduced post-Haddington Road agreement.
