Health secrets - Shameful, self-servingcollusion

TODAY we report on a self-serving collusion between the Department of Health and the HSE to control information about the extent of a cancer scandal.

Despite requests made under the Freedom of Information Act the real figures cannot be published because the department and the HSE felt they would cause public concern and misunderstanding.

How right they are.

Concern that we are not being told the truth about what is going on in our health service and an absolute misunderstanding of how these two organisations can behave in this shabby, deceitful way.

However, we should not be surprised. We all remember how the full extent of the Portlaoise cancer screening scandal was disclosed. An announcement was made at a sitting of a Dáil committee which was told that the numbers involved were far greater than the patients, the public and, almost unimaginably, the minister, realised.

Continuing the theme of information control, as late as yesterday Labour spokeswoman Jan O’Sullivan complained about the difficulty of getting details on how co-location will work, or the tax breaks given to the developers of these private hospitals on public land.

Last summer, Health Minister Mary Harney promised that all details in respect of each site, including finance, would be a matter of public information; however, the HSE now says that rent paid by Beacon Medical Group Beacon at Beaumont, Cork and Limerick will not be revealed. Ms O’Sullivan has also been denied details of tax written off for the developers.

So that’s a broken promise, and a mind your own business from the relevant ministers.

In our culture of dig outs, “loans” from party funds, personal and political donations meaning different things, this raises all sorts of unpalatable questions that will not go away until the details promised are revealed.

Ms O’Sullivan yesterday reminded us that another deadline for the Ann O’Doherty report into cancer blunders at Portlaoise had passed. The report is just one of seven cancer investigations awaiting publication.

No wonder these people want to control what we know, and no wonder Mary Harney and her colleagues have curtailed the Freedom of Information Act.