There is a piece in today's IT confirming both Simon Harris and Helen McEntee signed off on the strategy to fight the claims in 2017: Legal strategy on nursing home claims continued after Harris-McEntee ‘review’
I think any current minister who has dirty hands on this has a problem, difficult to fob it off on previous governments if it has been reviewed and confirmed.In an email sent on May 26th, 2017, a department official said the then Minister for Health Simon Harris and Minister of State for Older Persons Helen McEntee “confirmed” the strategy.
“There is no change in the department’s policy position – informed by legal advices to date from the Office of the Attorney General and confirmed at the recent high-level strategy review on long-stay litigation with the Attorney General and Ministers Harris and McEntee – that discovery should be avoided in all long-stay cases, including the Conroy case,” the department official said.
Of the current cabinet, those with dirty hands are likely to be:
Leo Varadkar
Micheál Martin
Stephen Donnelly
Simon Harris
Helen McEntee
Hildegarde Naughton
That's quite a line up.
If SF choose this issue to bring down the government and force an election, I think they might well succeed.