Bernard Allen (Cork North Central, Fine Gael)

I thank the Ceann Comhairle for the opportunity to raise this issue again tonight. With other Deputies, I raised it in 2006 and we are forced to raise it again tonight. Effectively, Professor Brendan Drumm, who is the chief of the Health Service Executive, has given the two fingers to the Oireachtas Members of Cork North-Central and Cork South-Central. We all signed a letter, which was one of the few signed by all Deputies in both constituencies, in March last. We requested a meeting with him to discuss this serious issue and we have not even got a reply. That is accountability in the style of the Health Service Executive, which will go through another one in a series of charades of meeting public representatives — I intend no insult to the Ceann Comhairle who will chair a meeting next week — preaching to us and not giving us an opportunity to interact or to communicate properly. We sent a request, signed by all Oireachtas Members concerned, for a meeting but we received no response. That is why we must raise the issue here.

No doubt I will be told tonight this is a matter for the Health Service Executive. Accountability has gone out the window. We do not know what is happening within senior management of the Health Service Executive. They are all promoting themselves. There are many managers but there is no management of the health services and we will not stand for that because the people of Cork deserve better.

The parents of chronically sick children were forced to take to the footpaths of Cork University Hospital again this morning because of the situation, as outlined by Deputy Kathleen Lynch. I will not repeat much of the detail the Deputy has given.

I hope the Minister of State, Deputy Hoctor, will not tolerate the attitude and the behaviour of Professor Drumm and his management team who seem to think that public representatives are just a crowd of nuisance makers. The Ceann Comhairle and I served on a health board for a number of years and we saw that on every item on the agenda, and even items that were not on the agenda, we could challenge and question management on the burning issues of the day. Now one cannot even get a response. A parliamentary question I tabled to the Minister for Health and Children, Deputy Harney, on 2 October was referred to the Health Service Executive and I have yet to get a reply on that urgent and important issue.

In November 2006 there was need for a consultant paediatric endocrinologist, who has still not been appointed. There was need for a consultant paediatrician — there is a part-time one in place at present. There were supposed to be three clinical nurse specialist to help the 270 children, to whom Deputy Kathleen Lynch referred, but there is the equivalent of 1.1. There is no dietitian, there is a half-time social worker and there is no dedicated clinical space.

This matter has been rolling on for many years with no accountability and no real response. This issue is not being taken seriously. Cork and the southern area is out of touch totally with what is happening in the rest of the country in the treatment of child diabetes. This should not continue.

I ask the Minister of State, Deputy Hoctor, who is representing the Minister for Health and Children, to carry out a departmental investigation into the mismanagement of this entire affair by Professor Drumm who, as I stated, is giving the two fingers to Oireachtas Members by not even responding to a request for a meeting where we could discuss with him and his many highly paid managers this ongoing burning issue. He should be brought to task for non-performance, despite his large bonus, and his contempt, not for public representatives but for the parents and sick children of the greater Cork area.

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