Cancer reports - A yellow card for HSE

SO, the Fitzgerald report, which looked at the Health Service Executive role in the Portlaoise cancer crises, has found there were serious weaknesses in governing, management and communications.

Mr Fitzgerald says this caused unnecessary anxiety and that the situation should not have arisen. There were too many people involved at different levels and from different areas of the HSE though their roles were not clearly defined, nor were their responsibilities.

Essentially, too many cooks spoiled the broth. This confirms what is already widely believed: that the HSE is top heavy, overly bureaucratic and determinedly secretive when its interests are threatened.

Earlier this week, Deputy Mary O’Rourke described the HSE as “a mystery wrapped up in an enigma, wrapped up in something else”.

“Because they don’t seem to be responsible to the minister, they don’t seem to be responsible to the Department of Health; they’re certainly not responsible to us as elected Dáil people,” she admitted.

If a doughty veteran like Mary O’Rourke cannot get an answer from the HSE what hope has an ordinary citizen, even if they have cancer, of getting the information they need?

The HSE was set up by Mary Harney to take parish pump politics out of the health services and to streamline the services available to patients. These laudable aims are part of her seven-year campaign and it would have been a wonderful achievement if they were realised at the first time of asking.

Yesterday’s reports will give the minister an opportunity to initiate further reform and insist that scandals like Portlaoise do not recur. They will also strengthen her hand should she wish to reassert more direct control over the HSE and point out to those responsible that they have been shown a yellow card.