Cancer misdiagnoses - Cross-party response to crisis needed

THE outcome of the no-confidence motion in Health Minister Mary Harney was never in any real doubt throughout the two-day Dáil debate.

But the vote should not be considered as some kind of vindication, or an end in itself. Instead, it should be seen as a beginning.

In her passionate and at times robust defence of her performance as minister, Ms Harney apologised to the women who have been victims of the misdiagnosis of cancer. Admitting that the system is flawed, she called on the opposition to put politics aside in order to tackle the problems of cancer in the bipartisan way that all parties eventually approached the difficult issues of Northern Ireland.

It is not enough that the problems in our system of cancer care should be addressed; they must be tackled effectively. People were ultimately turned off by the manner in which some played politics with issuesinvolving Northern Ireland, because it was utterly obscene to have people exploiting that disaster for selfish political ends.

When it comes to issues of life or death, the cancer issue is every bit as lethal, and any attempt to exploit it for political purposes should be seen as the ultimate obscenity. As such it has the capacity to undermine the whole body politic.

Surely the role of the opposition is to ensure better government, rather than merely scoring politicalpoints?

The Health Minister should have cross-party support for efforts to ensure the best possible system of diagnosis and a proper system of oversight to ensure that the kind of mistakes that have been highlighted in Portlaoise and elsewhere are not repeated.

For many years the regional health boards were the biggest political football in local and national politics. The health boards have been amalgamated into the Health Service Executive (HSE) in which the jobs of all the health board civil servants were assured.

Since then some of those bureaucrats have merely been creating work for themselves by playing administrative games that have little to do with health or combating disease.

During this week’s debate the minister complained that she has been having difficulty getting information out of the HSE. That is something she must tackle herself. When even the minister is having difficulty acquiring information, it is obvious that the system is congested with administrative officials getting in each other’s way.

Never have so many achieved so little with so much, must be the verdict on the current performance of the health service. In 1951, this country’s infant mortality rate — the highest in western Europe — became the hottest political issue of the day. By 2003 we had the lowest infant mortality rate in the world. This was a reflection of what can be done.

The Minister for Health is ultimately responsible for the condition of our health service, but no fair-minded person will doubt that she inherited a mess created by all the main parties in the Dáil.

Over the past 30 years, Fianna Fáil, Fine Gael, Labour, and the Progressive Democrats have all had ministers in charge of health. They all contributed to the mess and it is incumbent on all of them to help clean it up.