Caoimhghín Ó Caoláin (Cavan-Monaghan, Sinn Fein)

Does the Minister of State accept that we are looking at another scandal in our health services? Would the Taoiseach like to revisit his own position on the issue this morning? In my view, he showed scant regard for the cases already addressed, which have led to the loss of one life and the diagnosis of cancer in another case. There are also 14,000 patients who are obviously in great distress in the absence of certainty about their health situation. There was no understanding in the Taoiseach's responses this morning and he made a big effort to minimise what was involved here. There was no apology to the people concerned, their families and their loved ones. That is surely where we should have started.

How can it be claimed that this is not every bit as serious as the previous cases of misdiagnosis? In this situation we are looking at no diagnosis or delayed diagnosis, which is every bit as serious. People need to know that what is happening in Tallaght is not also the situation applying at other hospital sites the length and breadth of this State. There are 14,000 patients for whom around 23,000 X-rays have not been read. Every available resource should be employed to expedite this process because it could happen to anyone. As this situation might apply to other hospitals, the concerns could be expressed by anybody across the country, including our family, friends, neighbours and extended communities. People want to know how this could have happened in the first place. How is it possible for neglect to take place on this scale?

Our former Dáil colleague and now Councillor Seán Crowe raised this issue regarding Tallaght hospital two years ago, following a row-back on the services and a shortage of staff. I pulled up the various statements we issued at the time he highlighted the shortage of radiologists at Tallaght. That was two years ago when he gave expression to what the service providers at the hospital were saying, as well as those who had a direct interest in ensuring it was a hospital of high repute. Has a shortage of radiologists and other staff directly contributed to the failure of consultant radiologists to read these X-rays over the 2005 to 2009 period? I fear the answer is "Yes". The Minister of State should provide more information on this because his opening statement is simply not good enough.

Where was the management of the consultants? How do these people function if they can get away with completely ignoring one of their core responsibilities in our hospital network? Who manages, oversees or ensures that these consultants are doing their work? Does all this go into an office where nobody has any oversight responsibility and where nobody asks a question until the crisis erupts and appears on the floor of this Chamber? Where are the checks and balances in the hospital system to make sure that people are doing the job which they are employed to do?

Reading the HIQA statement causes even more alarm. A local GP told officials from HIQA in April 2009 about unopened orthopaedic referral letters from general practitioners and a backlog of radiology reporting in Tallaght.

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