A Leak To Remember

Minister for Higher Education Simon Harris

This morning.

RTÉ Radio One’s Today with Claire Byrne.

Minister for Higher Education Simon Harris, who was the Minister for Health at the time Leo Varadkar leaked a confidential government document on GPs’ pay to a friend, spoke about the controversy.

Claire Byrne: “This was your negotiation. Did you know at the time that the Taoiseach was getting this document that you had worked so hard to agree with the IMO and sneaking it off to his friend at the National Association of GPs?”

Simon Harris: “Well I don’t agree with that characterisation and we’ll come back to that in a moment. But no, I didn’t know. I didn’t know that the then Taoiseach was going to provide this document to the president of the National Association of General Practitioners. But I do very much accept his bona fides and what he was trying to achieve here in terms of an agreement that had now been reached, an agreement that had been announced indeed by himself and myself in a very public way on a Saturday, I think it was a Saturday, the 6th of April and then indeed I had actually brought a memo to Government on the 9th of April confirming that the engagement between the parties had concluded…”

Later

Byrne: “He was undermining you because if anyone was going to share that agreement with the NAGP, it was you?”

Harris: “No I don’t believe he was undermining me and I don’t think it’s about me either…”

Later

Byrne: “But it’s he obvious conclusion, it’s the obvious conclusion right. You’re doing an negotiation, you’re doing it with the Department of Health, with the IMO, all of this has been worked through in terms of the framework that should be followed and yet the Taoiseach is saying I want to get all the other doctors signed up to this, so he gets your document and sends it off to another crowd you have decided, quite rightly, that you’re not in negotiating with, this organisation, because of the framework that’s in place.

“There’s no other way to look at this. You are undermined here, minister.”

Harris: “I’m sure that wasn’t intentional because the negotiations had been concluded…”

Earlier: Leaking Confidence

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