Séamus Healy (Tipperary, Workers and Unemployed Action Group) | Oireachtas source

There will be no real reform in the health service until the HSE is abolished. It is accountable to nobody. It was set up precisely to allow Ministers and Government to evade responsibility for problems such as the CervicalCheck scandal. We have to remember the HSE was established by the extreme capitalist free marketeer, the former Minister, Mary Harney, and supported by former Taoiseach, Bertie Ahern, and former Minister for Finance, Charlie McCreevy. The agency was set up to deliver a service to customers, not patients, and to divest Government responsibility from the health service.

It went on to establish extreme right-wing managerialist models of public governance and delivery of services. The head of the HSE is not required to report operational matters to the Minister. His staff do not report failures to him. When a scandal breaks, of course, the Minister can say he did not know, he is shocked, in fact, he is furious. The head of the HSE can say he did not know, he is shocked, he is furious. The Minister and the head of the HSE cannot be expected to resign because they did not know. Now, they are required to clean up the mess. Both of them will set up investigations and inquiries, as they have done. They are both "bloody raging and mad as hell". Then, of course, the Minister and the head of the HSE will ride to the rescue of victims on a white horse. Of course, it will happen again on another issue in another few years, and the merry go round starts all over again.

The Minister should do the right thing and abolish the HSE. We need a health service which is democratically accountable at local, regional and national level, and where the Government and the Minister are ultimately responsible for the health service.

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