Richard O'Donoghue (Limerick County, Independent) | Oireachtas source

I will. The Medical Council then seeks a so-called external expert investigation. This expert is usually a past or present HSE employee. If a serious concern is brought to the national patient safety office in the Department of Health, a past or present member of the HSE is working there and the Minister for Health is the head of the service. The same Minister appoints certain members of the Medical Council. How can this system be fair and just? Where is the natural justice? The HSE investigates itself and has its own members on every health authority. It appears to have total control of incidents and how they are dealt with, including death. The public does not stand a chance.

I am asking for a public inquiry into all serious incidents recorded locally in UHL. The HSE's incident recording system is not fit for purpose. It is dangerous and unreliable. After a public inquiry, I will call for an external body to investigate all serious incidents in the health system in Ireland that does not involve any past or present HSE member.

I have asked the Minister for his help on more than one occasion and I am doing so again. We have serious incidents that are being reported but not investigated.

Serious incidents have been reported and are being looked at by HSE employees even if there has been a death.

After raising the issue of cover-ups in UHL, I was recently asked by reporters if I could send them information I had on this. Here is the piece for the media to understand. I submitted three incidents on UHL more than 12 months ago, and the HSE wrote to ask me if I could disclose the information. It already had it on file for 12 months. We are trying to ensure patient safety. If there are incidents, they should be reported properly and we will try to protect patients in the future. If the Minister is not willing to ask people from outside the HSE network to investigate cases, we will never rectify the problems we have in Ireland. It was done in the UK. Political people pushed for it. Independent investigations were conducted and hospitals were held to account for the mismanagement of incidents that were reported and never dealt with.

I again ask the Minister to investigate UHL using independent people and to hold people to account for mismanagement, which has been raised with the Minister and the HSE by health professionals. We must help them to make sure we can stop the occurrence of future deaths or serious incidents in UHL.

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