Time for a watchdog with teeth - Oireachtas health hearings

EVER since the avoidable death of Savita Halappanavar, in October 2012 at University Hospital Galway, our maternity services have, for all the right and all the wrong reasons, been the subject of questioning, often outraged, attention.

Parents, partners and families all needlessly bereaved — and later betrayed — have been misled and their investigations stymied. Without their courage and determination it would be business as usual in our dysfunctional and seemingly dishonest health service. The tragic reality is that it may still be business as usual — the Sir Galahad needed to drive real change has yet to announce himself — or herself — with the force needed to match the situation.

Health professionals have blamed a shortage of resources and reduced funding for a litany of baby deaths and though that must be a factor it does not explain the basic failures in administrating drugs or using equipment that led to some of the infant deaths in Portlaoise. Neither does if fully explain the failure to implement Hiqa proposals designed to protect patients. Neither does a shortage of resources explain away the behaviour that made Health Minister Leo Varadkar admit that he felt “ashamed” at how some hospital patients had been treated by his medical colleagues.

It certainly does not explain the shocking stonewalling described by Mark Molloy, whose baby Mark junior died in Portlaoise in January 2012, when he tried to get answers from the HSE. Neither does it explain away the HSE practice — entrapment would be a valid description — of encourging people who felt aggrived with the health service to initiate litigation knowing that, under Section 48 of the Health Act, that any matter that is or has been the subject of litigation cannot be investigated by the HSE. You can almost see the HSE and Sir Humphreys congratulating each other for running another difficult situation into the sand.

Mr Molloy was speaking at the Oireachtas health committee yesterday where another bereaved parent Amy Delahunt gave a scathing assessment of HSE management: “The HSE management team is clearly incapable and cannot be trusted to implement the recommendations of this or previous investigations by the Health Information and Quality Authority,” she declared. She also called on the committee to establish why HSE funds were used to employ legal teams to limit the scope of inquests and to limit “any derived learning”.

These are challenging assertions, especially for Mr Varadkar. That they come just after the European Commission pointed out that we spend more than the EU average on health but barely achieve average outcomes just makes the challenge all the greater. Earlier this week details of the powers given to the police authority were announced. Though the garda commissioner is not answerable to the authority it seems to have the teeth to drive a real change. Yesterday’s hearings suggest it is time to appoint an equally powerful watchdog for our health services, one that can reward achievement and sanction failure. It is time too to face up to the reality that without the possibility of career-ending sanction reform will remain an ideal rather than a reality.

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