Ministerial P45 needed for health of country

“YOU’RE damned if you do and you’re damned if you don’t,” said one senior HSE official yesterday when asked why it chose a Dáil committee as the means of informing almost 600 women in the midlands that they may not be clear of breast cancer as they had been led to believe.

He was wrong. The HSE could only be damned for doing it the way that it did it. It was appalling. Instead of doing the decent thing — personally informing the 97 women who have been recalled for surgical review — the executive went ahead and blurted it out at a Dáil committee.

So the unfortunate women found out about it via the airwaves. And that torpor of thinking was compounded when the HSE admitted it was beginning to send out letters to the women only today — rather than phoning them. That was disgraceful.

The responsibility for this mess cannot be allowed to rest with the HSE or with Professor Drumm. You sensed that the opposition had a compelling case yesterday when calling for the resignation of Health Minister Mary Harney. This was one crisis too many in the sad history of the breast cancer scandal.

This wasn’t just another mistake. This suggested system and communications failure of a deeply worrying magnitude.

What happened yesterday took what was already a huge scandal — nine women at Portlaoise Hospital falsely diagnosed by poor mammogram analysis as being clear of breast cancer — and turned it into a resigning issue for Ms Harney.

Even if a humane approach had been taken to inform the affected women, there would have been deeply disquieting questions. But all were rendered void. The HSE’s John O’Brien said if he hadn’t answered the question at the Health Committee, it would have been viewed as an attempt to “hide information”.

But the priorities were wrong here, utterly wrong. The first responsibility was to the women — and damn every other consequence.

The contrasting reactions of Ms Harney and her Fine Gael counterpart James Reilly were telling today. Dr Reilly broke down in tears when describing the awful plight faced by the women.

In contrast, Ms Harney was incommunicado for most of the day at meetings with cancer specialists. In the early evening she did give an interview but the political embarrassment had already been caused. She gave the impression yesterday of not caring enough.

Ms Harney promised reform when she took up the job three years ago but her ambition has been poorly served by delivery.

Mary Harney has reached the point where she has to admit she has failed to turn the health services around.

It’s time to go.