Hospitals forced to cooperate with Mater plan

LAST week, the HSE was ‘baffled’ by the decision of the board of Our Lady’s, Crumlin, not to cooperate with the choice of the Mater site. Nobody else is ‘baffled’ by this ‘bafflement’.

Neither the HSE nor the Department of Health (and Children) has been operating in or on the same galaxy, let alone planet, as the rest of us. Or phoned home.

This project was never for an amalgamation of the existing hospitals. The record shows it is for the dismantling of them — and their replacement by an entirely different fourth institution, controlled by the bureaucrats.

It has been driven with a dogmatic unilateralism which would make the bureaucratic centralism of the late Joseph Stalin look like the mushiest hand-holding consensualism.

For example: before Christmas, the CEOs of the three existing hospitals were hauled in and ordered to cooperate ‘in their own interest’. The three hospitals received an email informing them the HSE was about to place a tender for consultants to ‘plan’ the hospital — and demanding a response within 24 hours. Despite the serious concerns raised by the hospitals, the contract was awarded and the consultants are working at breakneck speed to create a fait accompli ‘plan’.

The minister says there has been “consultation”. All there has been is a casual, bull-headed discourtesy, bordering on contempt.

There is no paediatrician on the secret ‘task force’ — and not one representative of the patients, parents, staff or lay volunteers, let alone boards, which make up the vibrant caring communities of those three hospitals — and which have been working so hard, and with such compassion, for more than 100 years to cherish our children.

Throughout this pseudo-process, these dedicated and expert people have been left out in the rain and the wind — like serving girls at a 19th century hiring fair.

Taoiseach Bertie Ahern has now gone public with his own reservations about the choice of site. He is preeminently a practical man. He should now ask Government to freeze the project and move to the appointment of a truly independent but transparent body to review the proposals and the process — carefully and objectively — this time with the full participation of all the stakeholders. The alternative must be for the project to end in tears — at a cost of much more than the €500 million quoted.

Maurice O’Connell

19 Forge Park

Oakpark

Tralee

Co Kerry