The former head of the HSE Brendan Drumm says every year that the new Children's Hospital is delayed puts the project at risk.

He says he didn’t jump, definitely wasn’t pushed, and that his departure was simply because the HSE CEO role was not part of the latest health service revolution.

Past and present government officials have been accused of misrepresenting a 2007 report on where the National Children’s Hospital should be based by wrongly claiming the structure of international facilities examined supported an “integrated” co-location site.

A senior HSE official who has been on gardening leave for the past 18 months due to a multimillion-euro conflict of interest probe is still receiving his full €138,000 salary.

More than six years after he left the Health Service Executive (HSE), it’s now deceased former chief Kevin Kelly continued to be named in tax-related documents as the HSE employee making payments to family doctors for treating medical card patients.

CATHAL Magee is a man with rather a lot on his mind.

HSE chief executive Cathal Magee, who is 15 months into a five-year contract, may not be guaranteed a new senior position under health service restructuring plans announced by Health Minister James Reilly.

I WANT to propose a new quango.

FORMER HSE chief executive Brendan Drumm has written a book detailing his time at the top of the health organisation.

A STATE group tasked with overseeing child protection in Ireland has been set up — a year after former HSE chief executive Prof Brendan Drumm said the health service should not have responsibility for the sector.

ABRAHAM Lincoln was plagued with bad generals.

TWO retired health board officials and a former senior trade unionist received hundreds of thousands of euro in HSE consultancy fees for projects that were never put out to tender.

A DECISION on the funding of a new national children’s hospital has been put off until September when the Government will establish how much money is available for the project.

THE HSE spent more than €150 million to employ agency workers to replace staff who left the system or were blocked from jobs as part of cost-saving schemes last year — the highest rate in the organisation’s history.

FROM business-class flights, lavish meals and chauffeur-driven journeys to Ryanair, no hotels and just two internal trips in six months — cutbacks, it seems, are even happening at the top of the health service.

Hanging over the whole sorry debate about the new children’s hospital is the dark cloud of political fixing, central to governance in this country, writes Michael Clifford

A LEADING cystic fibrosis campaigner whose personal circumstances led to a public outcry over continuing delays to vital treatment facilities, has lost her fight for life.

THE HSE’s national ICT director, who oversees a €100 million annual information technology development budget, has been placed on administrative leave over claims of a conflict of interest involving private firms.

A RECORD number of children required crisis intervention from the HSE last year, with the executive admitting that there is a “significant under-resourcing” of social work departments to meet the challenge.

THE HSE has told an Oireachtas Committee that it cannot provide figures for the number of children in care who go missing; have a drug problem; have been assaulted or have harmed themselves.

THE PPARS health service salary system, which was heavily criticised in 2005 after a series of glaring errors were uncovered, is still costing the taxpayer more than €6 million a year.

THE new chairman of the HSE has identified patients’ access to their own medical records and greater use of information technology as key priorities during his term of office.

PLANNING permission for a Beacon private children’s hospital is to be welcomed.

GOVERNMENT and private sector power-brokers who have recognised the challenge posed by organisations like WikiLeaks and Cryptome are probably appalled by the publication of classified documents on the Afghan war.

FORMER heart surgeon Maurice Neligan has withdrawn his support for the building of the new national children’s hospital on a site in the centre of Dublin.

Outgoing HSE chief Brendan Drumm has said changes which are underway in the health system would deliver improved, but not perfect, child protection services.

The country's largest union is to ballot for strike action over a HSE plan to cut hundreds of temporary contract jobs.

SIPTU is to ballot its members working in HSE West for strike action over plans to make hundreds of staff redundant in an attempt to recoup some of the €90m overspend which exists in the region.

ATTENDING his last Oireachtas committee meeting on health and children as HSE chief executive, Brendan Drumm claimed that during his five years at the helm of the controversial health agency “solid progress has been made” but added “it would be naive to think that we still don’t have some way to go”.

EIGHT people were sacked by the Health Service Executive (HSE) last year for breaches of discipline.

UNDER fire health service chief Professor Brendan Drumm has defended the work of healthcare staff in light of stinging criticism by the Ombudsman Emily O’Reilly.

IT is unlikely that the thousands of people who enjoyed positive experiences when, in their moment of difficulty, they turned to our health service, wrote to ombudsman Emily O’Reilly to put their gratitude on record.

THE Garda investigation into the controversial €2.35 million SIPTU training fund will focus on up to €1m of the fund which remains unaccounted for.

WHEN quizzed for her thoughts on the controversial SIPTU training fund yesterday, Health Minister Mary Harney laid out what exactly €2.35 million could do in the health service.

SIPTU is to take legal action to secure an audit of HSE funds between 2002 and 2009.

THE HSE will today hand over further documentation to SIPTU on the controversial €2.35 million training fund the union repeatedly insists it did not receive.

THE first sod will be turned at the site of the new Children’s Hospital of Ireland by the year end, with the facility scheduled to open in late 2014, the head of the building project said yesterday.

The head of the HSE Brendan Drumm has said the new children's super hospital should be heading into the planning stages in the coming months.

SOME hospital services may still be curtailed or cancelled next month despite the Health Service Executive’s (HSE) belated decision on the number of specialist training places for qualified doctors, medical consultants have warned.

DEVELOPMENTS in disability and cancer services could be held up this year because of the recruitment restrictions, the chief executive of the Health Service Executive has warned.

HEALTH Minister Mary Harney was aware of the miscarriage misdiagnosis crisis in August 2009, almost a year before the scandal was made public.

THE Health Service Executive has demanded urgent answers from staff in Cork and Limerick after it was revealed that several family members of HSE employees were recruited to well-paid temporary jobs without an open competition.

ACTION is being taken to avoid cuts in hospital services next month resulting from a shortage of frontline doctors, Health Minister Mary Harney has claimed.