Dáil debates
Wednesday, 12 March 2008
Cancer Services Reports: Motion
1:00 pm
Alan Shatter (Dublin South, Fine Gael)
The reports which have been published are a damning indictment, not just of the HSE, on which the Minister wishes us to focus, but also of the Minister's incumbency in the Department of Health and Children. What we have is a damning indictment of 11 years of Fianna Fáil-Progressive Democrats government and a total incapacity on the part of a succession of Ministers for Health and Children to deliver the health service to which we are entitled and, in particular, the national cancer strategy.
We should not lose sight of the reality that the national cancer strategy was published in November 1996. Over a period of 11 years successive Fianna Fáil-Progressive Democrats Governments, Fianna Fáil Ministers for Health and Children and now a Progressive Democrats Minister for Health and Children have failed abysmally to implement the strategy. The problems at Portlaoise would not have occurred had it been properly implemented. In 2001 the Department of Health and Children issued a letter of determination to the Midland Health Board which provided an allocation for the development of a specialist breast unit in Portlaoise. Throughout 2000 to 2005 the regional director for cancer services advised the then Midland Health Board that the ideal situation would be to centralise cancer services in one unit to avoid fragmentation. The O'Doherty report records that acute hospital services in the HSE midland area were described to her review group as a single hospital on three sites. The O'Doherty report expressly states that this was at variance with the national cancer strategy. In 2007 what happened in the former Midland Health Board area, as still in place under the flag of the HSE, was at variance with what was recommended in the national cancer strategy 11 years earlier. The review group confirmed the inappropriateness of this in that it led to problems in recruitment and fragmentation of services. The Minister has described the difficulty of recruiting clinicians for the Midland Regional Hospital at Portlaoise. The difficulty derived from the reality that the Government abysmally failed to implement the national cancer strategy published by then Minister for Health, Deputy Noonan, in the coalition Government that was in place in 1996.
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