Chair of HSE board says he will not shy away from holding new HSE chief to account

The chair of the new HSE board said he will not shy away from holding the new HSE chief to account if he fails to perform.

Responding to questions from Fianna Fáil health spokesperson Stephen Donnelly, Ciarán Devane told the Joint Oireachtas Health Committee that “if he [Paul Reid] is not performing, absolutely, we need to have the conversation”.

“If we felt the performance of the organisation and the health of the population was at risk,” Mr Devane said, then people would be called to account, but not necessarily one person in isolation.

The legislation under which the new board was set up - The Health Service Executive (Governance) Act 2019 - makes the chief executive accountable to the board.

At today's hearing, Mr Devane said the board intends to set up four committees including:

• an audit and risk committee
• people and culture committee, with a HR brief that goes beyond remuneration
• a quality and safety committee
• a performance and delivery committee that would look at issues such as waiting times, access to services, number of procedures delivered to budget.

Mr Devane said he agreed with Mr Donnelly that access to the health service “is a problem” and that it would therefore be “a priority”.

He said in the short term, the board would be saying it needed to see programmes in place that address access.

Sinn Féin health spokesperson Louise O’Reilly asked if the board intended to be “hands-on” - unlike the previous board, prior to its abolition in 2011.

Mr Devane said it was the board’s intention to be hands-on at a strategic level, and “we shouldn’t be ducking that”.

He said consultant recruitment and staff shortages “has to be part of what we worry about”.

“If it’s critical to the success of the health service, then it’s part of what we should be opinionated about,” he said.

Asked by Labour Party health spokesperson Alan Kelly if he supported a review of who knew what in the lead-up to the CervicalCheck debacle - where women diagnosed with cancer were not told their smear histories were audited and that the audit results were at odds with the results they originally received - Mr Devane said he did support such a review.

"Out of every clinical incident there should be learning,” he said.

He said in his opinion “good open debate”, and not blame, could improve public confidence in the health service. Predictability with finances would also help with both public and political confidence, he said. Earlier this week, Health Minister Simon Harris said the HSE was running a revenue deficit of €116.2m by April 30.

He was not in a position to say what the end of year figure might be.

Mr Devane said there was “great vision” for the health service but “everyone is running so fast to just cope with the day-to-day” that “there is no space to move”.

Mr Devane confirmed that he is will continue in his role as chief executive of the British Council and that his “expectation” is that he will devote two days a week to his HSE role.

Asked if he believed Sláintecare, the government blueprint for reform of the health service was achievable, Mr Devane said he did.

“If we are sitting here in two years' time and 30% of it is done, we’ll say ‘That’s great, let’s look at the next 30%’.”