Health information - Tail wagging the dog for far too long

TO SUGGEST that the Health Service Executive has an image and credibility problem is as obvious as saying fish need water.

Elements of that organisation plough on, mildly frustrated that it is answerable to us through our public representatives. No doubt the charge of aloofness will be rejected by the many committed, excellent and conscientious people working in that chaotic system but, sadly, the undeniable evidence is there for all to see.

The organisation’s contempt for the notion of transparency is to everyone’s disadvantage, and it has made a public already frustrated with the terribly slow pace of reform angry, resentful and deeply suspicious.

Rather than trying to get support by winning the public’s hearts and minds, the HSE has alienated them by not being open about how our health service is run; guarding information as if they were involved in a private, unaccountable business.

Health Minister Mary Harney refers the majority of parliamentary questions addressed to her to the HSE. Previously answers to these questions could only be accessed by the public through the HSE website.

Now even that undemocratic, third-party information stream has been closed off. Answers have not been updated on the HSE site since December and access to these answers was closed on the HSE website last week.

This process — some would call it a scandalous dodge — is utterly unacceptable. The HSE wants each of us, citizen or parliamentarian, to contact the HSE Parliamentary Affairs department for answers to Dáil questions. Nonsense, absolute and unacceptable nonsense.

All answers to all questions asked in the Dáil must be widely available and published by the Dáil — no other method is acceptable. No opportunity for intervention, filtering or editing by the organisation subject to these questions can be tolerated. Allowing the HSE to control publication of answers to Dáil questions about its services gives two fingers to our parliament and to us.

Dáil deputies are entitled, on our behalf, to question all ministers and the answers must be made available to the public though Dáil records. If the information contained in replies to parliamentary questions is not readily available then the public organisation under scrutiny is beyond any acceptable degree of accountability.

Ms Harney, she of the watchdog Progressive Democrats, the party of transparency and openness, must instruct the HSE that they are obliged to account for themselves, and that answers to parliamentary questions she refers, or addresses to them, must be published like all other answers to parliamentary questions.

If this was an isolated instance of public access to public information being curtailed it might not be such a concern, but it fits in with an unhealthy pattern.

This administration has meddled with the Freedom of Information Act and done a disservice to the public interest. They have narrowed the Act’s remit to such an extent that even the title of the legislation is an ironic slap in the face for anyone who believes in public accountability. We have travelled too far along the road to where information that should validly be in the public domain is no longer so.

This tail has wagged this dog for far too long. After all, if we can’t get answers about a public health service, imagine what it will be like when great swathes of the service are in private hands.