Willie Penrose (Longford-Westmeath, Labour)

This motion focuses on the principle of political accountability whereby someone must account for the significant failures that seem to be systemic within the health service. Nobody can accuse the Minister for Health and Children of being personally responsible for misdiagnoses or for the oversight of each mammo-gram and the reading and assessment of same. We in the Labour Party support the concept of centres of excellence. However, my colleague, Deputy Jan O'Sullivan, raised significant concerns last night. We are all aware of the significant trauma and angst caused to those women who had to be recalled for further tests and assessment and to the nine women who suffered a failure of diagnosis in the first place.

The Minister cannot deny that it was she and her Cabinet colleagues who put in place the HSE, which has turned out to be a labyrinth of bureaucracy and non-accountability. For example, I wrote to the Minister on 15 November about the closure of cancer services at Midland Regional Hospital, Mullingar, which were successfully overseen by Peter Magill, consultant surgeon, Hugh Logan, consultant radiologist, and Kevin Cunnane, consultant pathologist. I stated in this letter that it was my understanding that patients normally catered for in Mullingar would now be transferred to the Mater Hospital. I asked the Minister:

Is there adequate capacity available at the Mater Hospital to cater for the number of patients who availed of this important service for women at Mullingar over the years?

I went on to ask:

Will the HSE provide transport for people who do not have same, in order to enable them get to their appointments at the Mater Hospital? For example, patients who have to travel from Moyne or Aughnacliffe in north Longford, Lanesboro in south Longford or other rural areas may well have to travel in excess of 100 miles and, in many instances, there is no element of public transport available. I am requesting that appropriate transport facilities be provided for any patients who finds themselves in such a position.

In a lovely letter I received in response from the Minister earlier this week, she stated:

Responsibility for the provision of hospital services rests with the executive. A copy of your correspondence has been referred to the chief executive officer of the HSE, who will arrange for the matters raised to be investigated and a reply issued directly to you.

I had already written to Professor Drumm to alert him to my concerns. He responded by thanking me for my letter and reassuring me that the parliamentary affairs division would investigate the matter and that a reply would be sent to me in due course.

What type of whirligig is this? The health board system at least provided some accountability and transparency because membership of the boards included political representatives and professionals. There is nobody at the end of the telephone in the HSE. The Minister expects us to join some type of Tallaght strategy where she advocates the United States model of health care, where it is all about profit and 40 million people have no medical cover. When Alan Dukes agreed the Tallaght strategy with Ray MacSharry, there was a unanimity of approach to economic policy. We could not be further apart on health policy. I would resign from the Labour Party if there was any suggestion that we go along the route advocated by the Minister of private, for-profit medicine. A universal right to access and equality of treatment are the basis of the Labour Party's philosophy in regard to the provision of health care.

Nothing less becomes the HSE than its cold, clinical way of dealing with patients, as typified by the peremptory and unforgivable manner in which it announced the decision to close thebreast cancer service at Mullingar. There were no complaints about the service and the women attending there under Peter Magill, Hugh Logan and Kevin Cunnane regarded it as first class. In a letter published in today's Westmeath Examiner, these doctors state their belief that the breast clinic service at Midland Regional Hospital, Mullingar was of a high quality. They go on to state:

We reject the notion that the breast service in Mullingar deserved to be withdrawn because of unsafe standards and believe that the manner of the HSE's precipitous move to do same (given that plans to close the service were already well advanced) did a grave disservice to those clinicians who have worked hard over the years to provide a quality service only to hear that the "plug was being pulled" on turning on "Six-one" on RTE 1.

What way is this to run a health service?

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