Micheál Martin (Cork South Central, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I am no wiser at the end of the Taoiseach's reply. My opening question raised a very serious issue, revealed in the e-mail of December 2012 from the national incident management team to the director of patient safety. It states that, "The NIMT is aware of numerous sad and serious cases occurring at all HSE sites". Will the Taoiseach ask the Minister for Health to come before the Dáil and elaborate on that e-mail? To what does it refer? What are the systemic risks in sites across the country? The public and parents are fed up of waiting three years to get answers, as they had to in the case of the HIQA report. These are very serious issues.

I am not raising the issue of funding, as one might do. It was HIQA which raised it. I quoted earlier from the Health Information and Quality Authority report, which states, "the hospital is neither governed, resourced nor equipped to safely deliver this level of clinical services". Furthermore, the HSE itself, in 2012 and 2013, had specifically identified clinical risks associated with surgery and emergency medicine, going as far as to say that surgical services at the hospital should cease. At the time of the publication of this report, however, the hospital continues to deliver those services.

In 2011, a Government intervention specified categorically that it was to be at this level at Bantry General Hospital. However, there was no follow-through in terms of resources, governance or equipment to deliver the level of clinical services it would mean. This core question must be answered. What happened? To what degree were the risks suppressed and why? People at a very high level are commenting on the numerous sad cases all over the country. Is it all being kept subterranean? Were it not for the parents of the five babies concerned, we would never have had the HIQA report. The e-mail was written five months before Mary Kate Kelly died and before the Portiuncula cases happened. It is time, not to give the pat or formulaic reply as tends to happen on such occasions, but to use the HIQA report as a catalyst for coming clean on what is happening and calling it appropriately and properly, which has not been done to date.

The Taoiseach seems to be saying, as the Minister has said, that there will be no accountability on the management side. It is not the classic tragedy. These deaths should not have happened and could have been prevented had people acted on the concerns identified here. Regarding prior consideration of these issues the e-mail states, "on this basis a decision was made not to initiate a service safety review". The following question was put in the e-mail: "Do you now think that a service safety review or a specific review of the overall performance of this service is required?" These are the people responsible for safety in the hospital and across the system. They seem to be at sixes and sevens about what to do next. This would have also gone elsewhere and others must have known about the very serious concerns that were being raised. Was the Government aware of how serious the situation was in 2011 and 2012? It is time the Minister came before the House to make a statement on the issue, on this e-mail and the HIQA report and to take questions from Members of the House on Portlaoise and other hospitals.

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