Caoimhghín Ó Caoláin (Cavan-Monaghan, Sinn Fein)

Ba mhaith liom mo bhuíochas a ghabháil don Teachta Uí Loingsigh. Ar son Teachtaí Shinn Féin, ba mhaith liom tacú leis na leasuithe ó Pháirtí an Lucht Oibre agus ó Fhine Gael agus cur i gcoinne rún an Rialtais. The Minister, Deputy Harney, in her initial response to the Fitzgerald report stated that she had asked the board of the HSE whether lessons arising from these systemic failures have wider implications across the HSE. It is patently obvious that they do and that this scandal, as well as the ongoing critical situation throughout our health service, raises fundamental questions about Government health policy and HSE management.

The Fitzgerald report highlights the weakness of management and governance in the process of review following the exposure of the misdiagnosis of women in the midlands. It states that "the needs of the patients potentially affected receded" and refers to the "systemic weaknesses of governance, management, and communication for dealing with critical situations". This is a very damning admission. The Minister's commitment that this will not happen again, as I said to her directly in the Joint Committee on Health and Children just the other day, cannot be taken seriously in the light of her failure to address the scandalous waiting times of up to 18 months for vital cancer tests such as colonoscopy, as exposed last week. In the case of the late Susie Long, such a delay proved fatal. All too sadly, we do not know how many more Susie Longs there have been or will be.

People throughout the country were appalled at the plight of the women who were given the all-clear after breast cancer screening in the Midland Regional Hospital in Portlaoise but who were later diagnosed with cancer. These reports show that the HSE cannot shirk the responsibility for this situation. The HSE is directly responsible for public hospital services and it has a duty to ensure that proper standards are maintained.

It was disgraceful for HSE chief executive, Professor Brendan Drumm, to try to shift the blame for this situation on to the people of Portlaoise and the midlands because, like people in other regions, they opposed any threatened downgrading and loss of services at their hospital. He did not apologise for that. We now have a situation where the Minister and the HSE are using public fear in the wake of the midlands scandal to drive forward their policy to centralise all cancer services in eight centres. We in Sinn Féin argued that eight centres is too few and that large swathes of our population will be ill-served by such a configuration. We are far from alone in this but there is now a climate of fear and people are reluctant to make this argument. For our part, we will continue to do so.

The loss of mammography services in local hospitals, such as Cavan General Hospital in my constituency, has been worrying for many women and their families in those counties. It represents yet another loss of a hospital service in the north east region. There is real and justifiable concern now that local services are being taken away without the full cancer treatment services being available and accessible at these promised centres of excellence. No such centres are planned north of a line from Dublin to Galway so the north east region falls into a black hole once again, with people from as far away as west Cavan and north Monaghan having to travel to Dublin for treatment.

Sinn Féin supports the development of centres of excellence for cancer care. Let people make no mistake about it. A revised plan for such cancer care centres must ensure all regions are covered, that cancer patients do not have to travel long distances for vital treatment and that existing cancer services in local hospitals are fully resourced and of a high standard. The removal of such services on the promise of as yet undelivered centres of excellence is not acceptable.

The HSE under the Minister, Deputy Harney, and the CEO, Professor Drumm, has become, frankly, a quango from hell. There is no other way to describe it. It is a totally unaccountable bureaucracy and an inefficient management established by this discredited Government to implement its grossly inequitable health policy. Major changes are required.

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