Mary Harney (Dublin Mid West, Progressive Democrats)

The English company won the contract. We are obliged under public sector recruitment procedures to go to tender. The company has significant experience in this area. The audit will be done during July and August for every hospital and will give us strong base information.

The Health Service Executive recently held the first conference of all the persons responsible for cleaning hospitals. The responsibility lies with people at different levels in each hospital. International best practice suggests that when a senior clinician has responsibility for hygiene in the hospital the standards are higher. It may be that a microbiologist should have overall responsibility for hospital hygiene.

I said recently that when I held my previous portfolio I visited meat factories and other places of work where hygiene standards were much higher than they are in health care. We would not allow food to be produced in the kind of hygiene environment in which patients are treated. That is not acceptable and that is why I have made this matter a priority. I have had many discussions with the national hospitals office on this issue.

One of the main tasks of the new information and quality authority will be to set standards. We must have standards and enforce them. There is merit in the Deputy's suggestion about a hit squad but unless the squad were to do the cleaning it would not achieve much. There is significant variation in what people believe to be the appropriate standards. That is why the conference took place and why the audit is important. As a result, each hospital will be told what is and is not acceptable.

I want to see greater transparency in reporting and I accept the Deputy's point that this is not done hospital by hospital. I am discussing this with the medical team in the Department and the Health Service Executive. One of the issues that arises is that there is greater laboratory surveillance now than there was in the past. That is not an excuse because it does not give the full answer but it may explain the higher incidence as we now have data which we did not have previously. That, however, does not excuse the fact that there were 105 cases of MRSA in the first quarter of this year.

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