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

Four years ago in the section on entitlement to fairness and health service reform the programme for Government stated:

A Patient Safety Authority, incorporating HIQA, will be established...

The Patient Safety Authority will introduce a national licensing system for hospitals, and will oversee the transition of hospitals from the HSE to independent local control.

I have invited people generally to read the four or five pages on health in the programme for Government. It is a fantasy read and an incredible fairy-tale. I have asked questions over a period of about two years on many aspects of it. I have received long letters back essentially stating that 90% of this will never be implemented. This culminated a month ago in the Taoiseach advising me during Leaders' Questions that universal health insurance legislation would never be introduced during the lifetime of this Government and that it may now be implemented at the end of the term of the next Government. I believe he mentioned 2021 or something, which shows incredible arrogance. People should read the document to get a sense of what was going on four and a half years ago and the things the Government was going to do.

The more serious element of it is that on the issue of patient safety not only was no effort ever made to establish a patient safety authority, but we now know courtesy of the HIQA report and e-mails I read out earlier that in December 2012 and right up to the present time there were numerous sad and serious cases across every site within our hospital network as articulated by the chair of the national incident management team and the director of care. People at a very senior level knew this.

In 2011 when the Oireachtas committee was told that Portlaoise was to be a model 3 hospital, which has a meaning in terms of the resources that should follow that, and 24/7 cover in surgery, surgical services and all of that, a political statement was made but clearly from the HIQA report we now know that there was no follow up in that regard.

The bottom line is that the one area that seems to have been neglected over the past four years and on which there has been no development or progress is the issue of risk assessment, the issue of safety and patient safety at the core. If it were not for parents of children who needlessly lost their lives, we would not know any of this and we would not know the conclusions HIQA reached. We would never have had that HIQA report.

In light of the HIQA report has the Government any plans to introduce a patient safety authority of the kind that was mooted four and a half years ago in the programme for Government or is that something it has shelved for eternity and is not now disposed to introduce?

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