Hospital Didn’t Verify Newly Hired Doctor’s Garda Vetting or References
- Dignity 4Patients
- Nov 16
- 5 min read
By Mark Tighe- 16/11/2025- Irish Independent- [Alaaeddin Almassri]- [Navan, Ireland]
The HSE failed to have garda vetting in place or verify references when it hired a doctor who was suspended for forging prescriptions to obtain drugs for personal use, an internal review has found.
The Sunday Independent has obtained the HSE report into the hiring of Dr Alaaeddin Almassri, a Palestinian doctor who was suspended by court order in June 2024 following an application by the Medical Council.
Dr Almassri admitted forging prescriptions on multiple occasions, when he worked in Mercy University Hospital (MUH) in Cork in early 2024, to obtain a range of drugs for personal use.
The doctor was the subject of a garda investigation at the time he was hired in Navan hospital in June 2024.
This weekend a garda spokesman said they submitted a file to the DPP which decided not to direct a prosecution.
The doctor admitted wrongdoing to the Medical Council, but said he obtained painkillers and nerve suppressants using forged prescriptions in his colleagues’ names to cope with post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD).
He said he started suffering from PTSD after his sister and her eight children were killed in Gaza by an Israeli airstrike in December 2023.
The hospital did not ensure this new garda vetting was completed.
Despite his suspension by the High Court on June 17, 2024, Dr Almassri signed a contract with Our Lady’s Hospital Navan on the same day. He started work in Navan on July 8.
The hospital in Navan only became aware of his suspension on July 24, and terminated his contract that same day.
The internal HSE report released under Freedom of Information (FOI) to the Sunday Independent states that Navan hospital “did not follow HSE recruitment standards, and specifically a number of crucial clearances were not secured prior to Dr Almassri commencing in post”.
It found that garda vetting was initiated but had not concluded before the doctor began working in Navan.
The doctor was issued with a garda vetting form via the garda vetting service. Due to a “clerical error” by the hospital, his date of birth was incorrect on the form he received and he could not complete the form.
“Regardless of the clerical error, the hospital did not ensure this new garda vetting was completed prior to his commencing work in the hospital,” the report said.
Though the hospital sought three references directly in relation to Dr Almassri’s previous work, none of these were obtained prior to him starting work.
In a breach of standard HSE policy, no reference was sought from his most recent employer. Instead, two “testimonial letters of recommendation” from overseas and dated 2021 were on file after being provided by a recruitment agency.
These letters were described as “highly and unusually similar”.
“These testimonials are so similar they have the same typo in the same place,” it was noted. “It is hard for the reviewer to be confident these are genuine testimonials written separately by two different people.”
The review found no evidence that Navan’s HR team cross-checked Dr Almassri’s employment history on Dime (Doctors Integrated Management E-System), a national database of doctors’ employment histories.
The review noted that the hospital had used an “off-framework finder’s fee agency” to hire Dr Almassri, and this was a breach of HSE financial regulations and procurement standards.
The review found eight ‘missed opportunities’ in the hiring process
As there was no service-level agreement with this agency, there could be “no confidence of the standard of due diligence conducted on staff proposed”.
The review found a total of eight “gaps” or “missed opportunities” in the hiring process, where the hospital could have learned of Dr Almassri’s disciplinary problems before he was hired or started work.
The doctor was allowed to start work based on garda vetting issued for his work in Castlebar in 2022.
Although HSE chief executive Bernard Gloster was directly told about Dr Almassri’s suspension by the Medical Council on June 20, three days after his suspension, a HR check of the HSE’s database did not yield results on him, as he had yet to begin his employment.
It was only after a second Medical Council letter to the HSE chief executive on July 19 that Navan realised Dr Almassri was suspended, and his employment was terminated on July 24.
The seven recommendations from the report include that garda vetting be received and independent reference checks be completed prior to employment commencing.
The report said HSE employers “must use direct recruitment in the first instance” instead of agencies that are not contracted.
“Where there is a genuine need to use finder’s fee recruitment agencies, these should be on framework agencies,” it said.
It said further training on recruitment standards should be provided by the HSE.
Meath TD and Aontú leader Peadar Tóibín, who has raised the case in the Dail, said he found it “truly astonishing” that someone could work in a HSE hospital without garda vetting, without references, and while suspended by the Medical Council.
“The chain of mistakes, errors and lack of due diligence conducted by the hospital’s HR and management just beggars belief,” he said.
“The fact that the High Court granted an order preventing this particular doctor from practising medicine and suspending him from the register of medical practitioners in Ireland before he commenced work in Navan raises deep questions about the standards and recruitment process.
The HSE said this ‘this would appear to have been an isolated incident’
“There must be accountability here and transparency — patients who were treated by this doctor deserve an explanation for how a suspended doctor wound up treating them.”
The HSE said its National Recruitment Service undertook a wider review of recruitment and no other matters of concern were identified.
It said this confirms “that this would appear to have been an isolated incident”.
The HSE said its national HR division has circulated updated guidance with a standards checklist to each region.
“The CEO is satisfied that the matters were investigated and concluded,” it said.
If you have been affected by any of the issues raised in this article and were abused in state run medical and health facilities, you can contact Dignity4Patients, whose helpline is open Monday to Thursday, 10am to 4pm.
Dignity4Patients Commentary: New doctor hired without Garda vetting confirmed or through checking of references. That’s not a minor paperwork mistake, it’s a fundamental breach of patient safety. Failing to vet medical staff doesn’t just expose patients to risk; it erodes public trust in the entire healthcare system. This wasn’t an administrative oversight. It was a critical breakdown in recruitment that leaves serious questions about how such unchecked hiring could ever be allowed to happen.
