Mary Harney (Dublin Mid West, Progressive Democrats)

The health forum was due to meet today for its third meeting, although it was postponed, for reasons of which Senators are probably aware, until next week or the following week. There are issues we want to discuss with the stakeholders, the social partners. This health reform is for all of us. There is one thing of which we can all be certain — we may never go back to school again, but we will all need to use the health services. Every citizen in this country is entitled to expect that the health service will reach the standard of progress that pertains in the country generally.

This brings me to the public-private issue. I do not believe it is acceptable that if one is a private patient or has money one has preferential access to publicly funded facilities. Senator O'Toole spoke about these facilities. They are funded by the taxpayer and staffed by nurses and radiographers who are paid by the taxpayer, yet the late Susie Long was told in one of these publicly funded facilities that if she did not have private health insurance she would have to go on a waiting list but if she did she would have the treatment the following week. This is fundamental to the new contract of employment for consultants. If I had said yes to current practices we would have had a contract two years ago. However, a fundamental aspect of changing our health system and guaranteeing equity of access is changing the contract of employment for consultants. In this way we can guarantee that citizens will be admitted as outpatients on the basis of medical need under an appointment made by the hospital, that they will be diagnosed on the basis of medical need under an appointment made by the hospital, and that they will be admitted to accident and emergency departments on the same basis. There should not be a division between the private group and the public group. These are unacceptable practices and changing this is at the heart of the new contract for consultants.

I cannot guarantee there will be no more crises. The best health systems in the world have failures. Human beings make mistakes and the health system is very labour-intensive. However, I can guarantee that whatever part of Ireland people live in, they will have access to the same quality of cancer care. The implementation of these standards will be overseen not just by Professor Keane and the cancer control group but by HIQA, the new standards body which is probably unique among health systems and certainly new in Ireland. We now have a State organisation whose remit is to set standards and monitor their enforcement. That is the greatest guarantee of all.

We also want to make sure that when mistakes occur people blow the whistle. The awful situation in Portlaoise was brought to the attention of the authorities by the director of nursing at the hospital. That is the reality. Letters were written to the Department of Health and Children in 2005 and were acted on robustly by the cancer division and the HSE. The medical director, Professor Hollywood, who was mentioned here earlier, spoke to Mr. Naughton about these concerns. However, it was the director of nursing, who knew about the false positives, who last August drew attention to what was happening and it was only after that complaint that the service was suspended. I commend her, as I have commended her previously. In addition, two nurses at Our Lady of Lourdes Hospital in Drogheda drew our attention to what was happening in the maternity unit. The new Health Act provides that people who make complaints are not adversely affected in their place of employment and I am a strong supporter of this. It is not that I want people going around reporting on everybody else but we must encourage people to come forward when they see something is wrong. For more than 25 years in Drogheda many people must have known that things were wrong, yet it took a report from two nurses to bring it to our attention. To be fair, an administrator in the North Eastern Health Board, Ambrose McLoughlin, took it seriously.

I do not know when we will have a primary care centre in Athlone. Deputy O'Rourke has spoken about this on many occasions. As a matter of interest, I understand that few people in Athlone attend accident and emergency departments anywhere, which is an interesting statistic.