The Dail Public Accounts Committee has urged the HSE to contact St Vincent's Hospital, Dublin today to explain its stance on the top-up pay controversy.

The hospital has to date refused to give details to the HSE on top-up payments to senior staff.

HSE Human Resources Chief Barry O'Brien quoted recent corrrespondence from St Vincent's where the hospital stated it was compliant with public pay policy and cited contractual and data protection reasons for not divulging information on top-ups.

PAC Chairman John McGuinness described this as 'nonsense' and urged Mr O'Brien to contact the hospital immediately and order it to provide clarification on on its top-ups policy.

Department of Health Secretary General Ambrose McLoughlin told the PAC meeting that the HSE was working with voluntary agencies to ensure they were compliant with public service pay in terms of remuneration of their senior staff.

He told the PAC that the Department and HSE were introducing strict new rules on compliance with public pay and top-ups.

A national pay policy was being issued by the Department of Health, he said, and board members of voluntary agencies would be told they had no discretion in relation to top-ups for senior staff.

He said he would encourage St Vincent's Hospital to cooperate fully with the Minister for Health in terms of divulging information on its top-ups to some senior staff.

HSE audit department chief Geraldine Smith said three senior managers at St Vincent's Hospital were found to be receiving additional payments funded from external sources, and when the HSE queried this further, the hospital said as this pay was not from public funds it would not be appropriate to release that information.

Mr McLoughlin said he was anxious to get the top-ups issue resolved fairly quickly.

He pointed out that the majority of voluntary agencies were complaint with pay policy- issues existed with a relatively small number of organisations.

Meanwhile, the Mater Hospital has told the Dail Public Accounts Committee (PAC) that the Central Remedial Clinic had made inaccurate statements about its administration of a CRC pension scheme.

In light of this, PAC members called on former CRC Chief Executive Paul Kiely to correct incorrect statements he made previously to the Committee about the scheme.

Mater Chief Executive Mary Day told the PAC today a €660,000 per annum sum given to it by the Central Remedial Clinic (CRC) was the Clinic employers' contribution to cover the CRC staff pension scheme.

Ms Day told Independent Deputy Shane Ross that a statement in the CRC accounts that the Mater charged the Clinic over €600,000 for the operation of this scheme was not correct.

The PAC called on former CRC Chief Executive Paul Kiely to correct statements he previously made about the CRC pension fund administered by the Mater. It had been alleged, incorrectly, that this was a 'phantom fund', the Committee meeting was told.

PAC Chair John McGuinness said Mr Kiely should correct the previous incorrect statments he made about the pension fund.

Mary Day told the Dail Public Accounts Committee (PAC) today that the Mater administers the CRC pension scheme under the Voluntary Hospitals Superannuation Scheme. Ms Day said the CRC scheme administered by the Mater was in line with public sector pensions policy and the HSE had authorised the necessary payments.

This practice dated back to the 1970s, when the CRC had sought Department of Health funding but could not be given this funding through the Department at the time as it was not a voluntary hospital. Instead, it was decided at the time that funding would be administered through the Mater.

Mr Kiely had claimed that he had raised concerns about the scheme with the Mater on numerous occasions. However, Ms Day told the Committee she could find no record of such correspondence from Mr Kiely.