Bertie Ahern (Dublin Central, Fianna Fail)

I wish to point out that this is the first national hygiene services quality review report from the Health Information and Quality Authority, HIQA, the new agency the Government promised. This report cannot be compared with the previous ones because it was carried out on a different basis. The report is part of an important new development in the Irish health service that will see standards set, monitored and reported on objectively.

The report gives the results of the review conducted in the 51 acute hospitals between March and September. While hospitals generally performed well in the areas of hygiene and in-service delivery, the results on governance were poor — that aspect was not included in previous reports. This contributed to disappointing overall results. While improvements have been made and are acknowledged in the report, no hospital received a very good rating. Seven were categorised as good, 35 as fair and nine as poor. The clear message of the report is that hospital managers and health boards must take hygiene and infection control seriously.

The method of assessment and the criteria used in the latest report are substantially different and, rightly, more onerous than those pertaining to the previous audits carried out by the Health Service Executive, HSE, and the results, therefore are not comparable. Previous audits concentrated only on service delivery.

The review also includes assessments of corporate management to ensure efforts at governing, identifying, managing and reducing infections are sustained. Hospitals should concentrate more on these matters because while hospitals generally perform well on hygiene, governance is poor. The audit shows that there are weaknesses in some hospitals relating to the priority placed on hospital hygiene — that is the governance issue. Today's report gives us an opportunity to impress upon the management of each hospital the improvements that must be made to make hospitals cleaner.

I agree with Deputy Kenny's comments on the superiority of the old system of matrons and religious orders and I worked under such a regime. They moved heaven and earth on the wards to ensure hygiene prevailed and my generation will remember the smell associated with hospital hygiene that is no longer evident today.

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