A crisis over Army Medical Corps staffing deepened last night after it emerged a doctor convicted of fraud slipped through unchecked and worked for the Defence Forces.
Due to a shortage of medical officers in the Defence Forces, doctors are being recruited on short-service commissions, particularly for duty overseas.
Dr Elizabeth Abimbola Ogunjimi fell into this category. She qualified as a doctor in Hungary and had been registered with the Irish Medical Council.
But because of flaws in the recruitment process, her difficulties with the immigration authorities, and her conviction for fraud in Hungary, were not discovered.
The Nigerian doctor was officially told she was sacked at the weekend, and may be deported. An overhaul of the process means that the backgrounds of recruits will be fully checked out in future.
But the Department and military management are still left with the major problem of attracting more doctors into the medical corps, with numbers at less than half strength.
Dr Ogunjimi was commissioned as a captain by President Mary McAleese to serve for a maximum of a year from May 1 last in the Defence Forces medical corps.
The decision to sack her followed a military investigation, with the assistance of gardai, and the move was approved by the Government last month at a Cabinet meeting.
Senior officials from the Department of Defence also sought the advice of Attorney General Paul Gallagher before seeking her dismissal under the Defence Act, 1954.
Dr Ogunjimi qualified as a doctor in Hungary in 2002 and was registered here with the Irish Medical Council. But it emerged last July that she had been convicted of fraud in Hungary in January 2006.
The fraud centred on the handling of VAT payments in the Nigerian Embassy in Hungary while Dr Ogunjimi was working there.
Members of the Garda National Immigration Bureau told defence officials last July that following inquiries into the doctor's past, they were to carry out an investigation to establish whether she was lawfully in the country and should be allowed to remain here.
Authorities
A senior military officer was appointed by the authorities to carry out an investigation and, in August, Dr Ogunjimi was told that proceedings were being taken that could lead to her being dismissed from the medical corps.
Last January, she was informed of the decision and given time to respond to the findings. A garda investigation established that Dr Ogunjimi had allegedly entered the State unlawfully and the immigration bureau had been in possession of her passport when she joined the medical corps but she did not declare that to the Defence Forces.
A spokeswoman for the Department of Defence last night confirmed that the doctor had been told of her dismissal at the weekend.
It is understood military authorities have already carried out several changes to its process of recruiting personnel for short service commissions, particularly where there is a lack of information about the background of non-nationals.
In many cases in the past, recruitment officers accepted the details supplied by potential employees without proper checks.
As a result of changes introduced with the assistance of the gardai, checks are now being carried out to establish a person's immigration status and find out if there are any criminal convictions.
- Tom Brady Security Editor
