Mother questions why word 'accountability' does not feature in latest Sláintecare report

Róisín Molloy, whose son Mark died shortly after being born in the Midland Hospital Portaloise in 2012. Picture: Moya Nolan

A bereaved mother campaigning for health service accountability is demanding Stephen Donnelly explain why the word “accountability” doesn’t appear in the latest Sláintecare progress report.

This will be one of the questions Róisín Molloy, who believes a system of “fitness to manage” hearings should be brought in for health chiefs, will ask when she and her fellow members of the Sláintecare Implementation Advisory Council meet the health minister later today.

She believes a legislatively-based accountability framework for all healthcare professionals is the single most important action for health service reform.

Another question she plans to ask the minister is why HSE staff investigate adverse events that happen at their own hospitals.

She also wants to know why those who do the investigations have little or no formal training.

The meeting tonight has been called after Laura Magahy, director of the Sláintecare programme, and the chair of the Sláintecare advisory council, Dr Tom Keane, resigned.

Ms Molloy was appointed to the council as a patient advocate by former health minister Simon Harris in 2018.

She believes health chiefs who fail in their jobs should be forced to face the consequences.

Nobody has been disciplined for failings that led to the death of the mother of four and husband Mark’s son at the Midland Regional Hospital in Portlaoise on January 24, 2012.

Róisín and Mark Molloy from Castlebrack, Killeigh, Co Offaly . The couple's son died at Midland Regional Hospital in Portlaoise on January 24, 2012. File picture: Stephen Collins/Collins Photos

As well as fighting for answers as to why their son died, the couple has been campaigning for greater HSE staff accountability.

Ms Molloy, from Killeigh, Co Offaly, said: “Doctors and nurses go before fitness to practise panels but there needs to be a way of determining whether someone is fit to manage.

‘And those that aren’t should be made to explain their decisions, especially where there were decisions taken not to act on previous recommendations.

Nearly ten years after Mark died, there is still the need for a far more robust system to deal with hospital management and other non-clinical staff who don’t do their jobs properly.

She said she was always told that one of the cornerstones of Sláintecare was going to be accountability.

“I see very little of that and I would like to know what the issues are," she said. 

“On a very basic level, you do have to wonder how serious the health service is about accountability when the word doesn’t even feature in the latest progress report.” 

In May 2015, then health minister Leo Varadkar said the way the HSE had treated the Molloys and other parents of babies who died was "appalling".

As well as finding their treatment "extremely worrying", he also admitted that the Molloys and other parents "were not dealt with honestly".

A year before Mark died in 2012, senior consultants at Portlaoise hospital had warned the HSE that the obstetrics unit was dangerously overstretched.

The letter was sent after the deaths of babies Katelyn McCarthy in 2006, Nathan Molyneaux in 2008, and Joshua Keyes in 2009 had occurred.

Reviews that could have prevented further tragedies were not acted upon.

Both the HSE and Mr Donnelly were asked for a comment.