Catherine Connolly (Galway West, Independent)

This is our second report and we are waiting on a third one. In this second report, we are told the percentages of the pelvic procedures carried out not reaching the criteria are so high that a further inquiry is mandated. The Minister is doing this now in respect of a look back at all of the patients, and I welcome it. We then look at what the percentages were because we cannot repeat them often enough. At CHI at Temple Street, 60% did not meet the clinical indication requirement, while at Cappagh 79% did not meet the clinical indication requirement. Those high percentages of unnecessary operations were carried out.

I welcome the changes the Minister is making. I wish to zoom in, however, on the board of CHI. I recognise the people there are serving with no remuneration. We need to look at this whole model. I believe hospitals should be run by the HSE. That CHI board has been there for a long time. It was put on a statutory footing in 2019. There has been a major turnover of directors. We had them before us at the Committee of Public Accounts on Thursday. I take a lot of the blame myself in regard to our inability to ask questions in a set space of time, but I was singularly unimpressed with what came before us at the committee. The Minister might look at it. We had a new CEO who knew nothing about anything except to tell us the settlement in relation to the previous CEO was confidential. That CEO had a new name and same salary and nothing else. That CHI board also presided over €250,000 it failed to collect from private insurance. Its representatives were before us without a chairperson or a single member of the board to account for anything. They referred to there being a report every year or an internal review carried out by external people. They could not tell us anything about that, however, because that was simply for them to learn. The Minister seems to have got one of those reports lately, but one is carried out every year, they tell us in the financial statements, to reassure them regarding governance. I received no assurance.

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