Pádraic McCormack (Galway West, Fine Gael)

Since this misdiagnosis scandal broke, more than ten women have come forward with their personal story of being misdiagnosed with a miscarriage, but going on to have healthy babies, thank God. One of those was a courageous woman in County Galway who came forward and exposed what had happened in her case. It is beyond belief that if these women had not sought a second diagnosis, their babies would simply have been killed.

The HSE has received hundreds of calls from concerned families about the way they have been treated in maternity hospitals throughout the country. In the aftermath of this scandal, the Minister for Health and Children must conduct an urgent investigation of maternity services, including the effectiveness of equipment and the training of staff. It is a false economy with dreadful consequences for the HSE to operate in this slipshod manner. Only last week a man was awarded €4.25 million in a settlement for an action over negligence at his birth in a Cork hospital. How many more such settlements have taken place while services at the front line are being cut?

It has recently been exposed that over €2.25 million was put aside in a SIPTU and HSE account to fund unnecessary foreign travel for officials and their spouses, yet we have not received an explanation. How can I explain all this to the mother who came into my office on Monday who is a full-time carer in her home, looking after her sick, elderly husband and a handicapped daughter who is confined to bed and suffering double incontinence and who had her supply of nappies cut back because the HSE simply did not have the money? Is that not a scandalous situation? How can I explain this to the daughter who gave up her job to care full-time for her aged mother, who had a stroke and who cannot now feed or wash herself and needs 24 hour care, and has had her home help cut by half to six hours per week? Everyone in this House could give several examples of such cases.

There has been such a waste of money at the highest levels of the HSE. Are the executives in the HSE not ashamed of themselves drawing bonuses on top of their salaries of €300,000 to €400,000 a year? It is time somebody cried "Stop", and the buck stops with the Minister. What will she do about it? That is the question I am being asked every day in my office and on the street. All our pleas are falling on deaf ears and the dedicated people on the front line must struggle on because the Government has run the health service into the ground due to its mismanagement of the economy and the health service over the years.

The public have little recourse in these matters. My wife has been involved in a patient focus group, but when a complaint is made to the hospital, the hospital management itself investigates the complaint. What conclusion will they reach other than to back up their own staff? It becomes extremely frustrating for the families of patients who have been mistreated in hospital to get any satisfaction when they make a complaint, because it is a closed shop inside. The Minister would want to do something about that.

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