Drumm: Health board system may have been better

THE chief executive of the HSE said yesterday there were questions over whether the HSE was better now than it was five years ago, as it emerged the executive does not have a series of records in relation to children in care.

Speaking before the Public Accounts Committee (PAC) yesterday Professor Brendan Drumm said that although, in an ideal world, the issue of child protection should be dealt with in an integrated system, if it were taken out of the realm of the HSE there would be “100% focus on it” and no competing interests.

He said: “I think maybe what we need is a review of what our HSE structure is. Has it delivered anything above what the older system did? Is it a better structure? Does it have faults?”