Mary Harney (Dublin Mid West, Progressive Democrats)

In respect of the last question, in fairness to the HSE, the letter it wrote to the patients with the questions and answers, which will be very helpful to patients, is impressive. The HSE has also put in place a helpline and has been in constant engagement with the families of the four patients who passed away from lung cancer.

There are issues that arise for locums. Obviously, they must be registered as specialist registrars with the Medical Council. The new Medical Council is being appointed tomorrow with stronger powers in respect of competence assurance and so on, which is long overdue. The major issue for our hospital system is the fact that of the 6,000 doctors who work in our hospitals, 4,000 are non-consultants. Many of them are relatively junior doctors. This is why it is so important to get a new contract of agreement, the results of which I hope we will get tomorrow evening when the ballot is concluded and announced by the Irish Hospital Consultants Association, so that we can substantially increase the number of consultants working in the system based on a contract of employment that suits the needs of the public health care system and not the current contract which certainly does not meet the requirements.

In respect of the time issue, a review of 16,000 X-rays is being carried out at a hospital in France. One must decide what one will review and how one will do it. Among the medical expertise available in this country and supported internationally, there was a difference of opinion about whether it should be reviewed at all. The HSE has taken a precautionary view in the interests of patients and decided to review all of the cases and tell the patients that it was going to do it. It could have gone off and got some experts to look at all these X-rays and only written to patients subsequently, but it decided to be up-front and open, which I support. I think that has been a very good thing.

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