John Lahart (Dublin South West, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

Mr. Reid talked about openness and transparency and I get that. I just want to gesture towards the following point and I do not want a response to it. There are a number of outstanding reports and investigations that have not been published and that would be a concern for committee members. These reports and investigations range from issues like child and adolescent mental health services, CAMHS, to nursing homes and that kind of stuff. I just want to alert Mr. Reid to the fact that these are on our radar, although I cannot go into detail on them now.

I want to raise the issue of the medical scientists' industrial action, which is taking place today, and it should not have come to this. Every test, as previous speakers have said, is critical and dependent on the role of the medical scientists. They made a presentation to us yesterday that was pretty factual. This is going back an awfully long time and there are recruits being brought into the system who are significantly less qualified but getting more pay. One of the lines they gave us was that the Department of Public Expenditure and Reform does not fully understand what is going on and that, if it did, these people would not have been allowed to strike. There is a suggestion of a communications issue between the HSE and the Department of Public Expenditure and Reform on the importance of their roles. There is also a suggestion that they are leaking to the private sector and even to other better paid positions within the public sector.

I had constituents on to me in recent days about my local hospital, Tallaght University Hospital, and the Chair would have had the same communications as we represent the same constituency. These people have had procedures and appointments cancelled because they were dependent on tests being carried out. This is an issue that has its origins back as far as 2001 and a lot of iterations since then. The HSE says it is engaging in the WRC and all the rest of it but this should not have happened. The laboratory is the pulse of a hospital. There are very few procedures, aside from scans and X-rays, that are so connected with every procedure that has to take place in a hospital and so many procedures simply cannot take place without them. Will the HSE give us some sense of the urgency with which this is being dealt? Their claims are serious and they are earnest and well-qualified people who see less qualified people coming into different grades in the system and getting paid more. Will the HSE give us some serious answer on how this will be resolved, when it will be resolved and what steps it is taking to ensure further industrial action, which the medical scientists have said will have to take place, will not take place?