MINISTER FOR HEALTH Stephen Donnelly said that yesterday was the first time he learned that Robert Watt attempted to email him a brief on the now abandoned proposal for Tony Holohan’s secondment. 

Watt, secretary general at the Department of Health, told an Oireachtas committee yesterday that he attempted to contact the minister about the appointment last year but failed to because he said the minister’s laptop had been “hacked”.

Speaking today, Donnelly confirmed that his laptop and phone were given to “IT people” due to a security issue that arose while he was in Texas. 

He said that he handed over the devices for about a week when he arrived back in Ireland. 

The Minister said he had to be “vague” on the nature of details surrounding the security issue. 

When asked if Watt would face any disciplinary action following yesterday’s committee appearance, Donnelly said that the Government doesn’t “make sanctions based on tone”. 

Watt appeared before the Oireachtas finance committee yesterday, when he largely rejected an external review into the controversial proposed secondment of the former chief medical officer Dr Tony Holohan.

His performance at the meeting drew criticism, including from Social Democrats leader Holly Cairns who called it an “extraordinary spectacle”. 

Watt told the committee yesterday that Holohan’s secondment fell through largely due to an issue of “communications”. 

The report also found that there was a lack of formal communications about the secondment between the Taoiseach, Minister for Health and the Department of Public Expenditure and Reform.

Following the revelation that Donnelly’s laptop and phone had to be handed over to IT due to security issues, independent senator Gerard Craughwell today called for the National Cyber Security Centre to carry out a full audit of all government departments. 

Craughwell said “I believe that in light of the cyber-attacks on the HSE, MTU etc. this is a most serious admission from the most senior official in the Department of Health. I have asked the Garda Commissioner to carry out a full investigation into this security breach.”

“I would ask that Government ask the National Cyber Security Centre to immediately carry out a full cyber audit of all government departments as a matter of urgency,” he added. 

Taoiseach Leo Varadkar, speaking alongside Donnelly at the opening of a new wing at the Mater Hospital, said that he expects Watt to carry out the recommendations of the report on the secondment proposal “in full” regardless of his views. 

He said that there needs to be better practices and procedures in place to ensure that this “doesn’t happen again”, and that he expects Watt to implement the needed changes.