Rónán Mullen (Independent)

I broadly support what Senators O'Toole and Harris said about ministerial responsibility in the Tallaght hospital issue. However, there may be questions to answer in due course as to how this problem evolved. We must look at the failures within the hospital administration. That is the core issue. In passing, I regret the example given by Senator Harris with regard to seeking an abortion in Britain. That is a tragic abuse of human rights which should never be used as an argument for anything.

What has happened in Tallaght hospital raises the issue of the role of clinicians in the management of hospitals. Would we be better off if we had more clinicians and people with medical experience directly involved in management? Obviously, they would need managerial training. I wonder if a culture of administration and bureaucracy can block out the real needs of patients. Would more direct participation by medical staff mean that problems in the system would be spotted earlier and their implications understood? This seems not to have happened in Tallaght hospital. We want consultant-led services. It seems there was a lack of staff in Tallaght, as well as a failure within the hospital to communicate its needs to the media and the Government and the very people who, presumably, continued to assume that they would be provided with a service. A backlog of unanswered correspondence assumes a number of people who think they will soon receive a service. Doctors were referring patients but achieving no output from their referrals. This had tragic consequences, to judge from one report yesterday. A debate on this topic would be welcome but it should focus on the failures which have occurred. It would be just as inappropriate to draw the Minister into the issue as the Most Reverend Dr. John Neill, Archbishop of Dublin, who is patron of the hospital. We need to look at what happened. It could provide a case study to allow us to understand the problem which is probably occurring in other hospitals.