Eamonn Maloney (Dublin South West, Labour)

I thank the Ceann Comhairle's office for providing time for the discussion of the recent HIQA report. I wish to reflect on the fact that this report came about following the unfortunate death of Tom Walsh and I join others in conveying my sympathy to his family.

This report is frank, straight and detailed in the 76 recommendations it presents. It commenced as a report on one hospital, namely Tallaght hospital. I have not finished reading it but, interestingly, it raises some important issues about all 33 public hospitals and puts a spotlight on some of the practices and systems that pertain to them.

I note when the report deals initially with Tallaght hospital, it rightly refers to a history of long-standing challenges with regard to governance, management and funding. Every detail of the statement is correct. This begs a question about those supervising public hospitals over the past 12 years and says much about the shortcomings of previous Ministers with responsibility for health and about the HSE. They are as complicit in what happened in Tallaght hospital and what is happening in other public hospitals as those involved in mismanaging hospitals, in this case with regard to governance. This continued for 12 years in the case of Tallaght. I must acknowledge after three months the Minister, Deputy Reilly, told the House he would deal with the issues of governance in Tallaght hospital and he did so. I am not one given to flattering people, but I am stating a fact.

The practices that continued there should not have been allowed to continue but they were. For 12 years the powers that be turned away from what was happening despite the fact that those working in the hospital, the very good staff in Tallaght hospital, were the first to recognise the difficulties and the bad practices in the hospital but got nowhere with those involved in its management and governance and this is regrettable.

When it was first opened, Tallaght hospital was flagged as being the jewel in the crown of the health system. This may have been the intention, but it should be noted the catchment area for Tallaght hospital has a very large population and population growth in the large urban areas in its surroundings such as Clondalkin, Lucan and Rathfarnham was not considered. Therefore, from Tallaght hospital's early days we ended up with it becoming the busiest hospital in the country. Not only was it the busiest but it was underfunded and for its first 12 years neither the HSE nor the previous Minister with responsibility for health did anything about the number of consultants working there. People are mesmerised by the waiting lists and the number of people on trolleys in Tallaght hospital, but there had to be because it had one of the lowest ratios of consultants and operated with one of the largest population concentrations of any public hospital. It could not have gone any other way. It had a pretty unfair deal.

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