Juno McEnroe: Time for Harris to show leadership with sacking of O’Brien a necessity

Vicky Phelan’s candid statement outside the courts that the women of Ireland could no longer put their trust in the CervicalCheck programme sent shockwaves through the health system.

This is arguably the biggest scandal this Government has had to deal with since the Coalition was formed, two years ago this weekend.

Time and again we have seen a culture of stubborn leadership and wilful neglect operating at the top echelons of society, which has dented public confidence in authority.

Vicky Phelan is the latest victim in a tide of negligence, tragedies, and ultimately failed services in recent years, particularly in the health service, that have gone unpunished.

Time after time, no one is held to account. And if they are, it is only after families are dragged through the courts.

The Limerick mother had a smear test in 2011 after her second child and was cleared of any abnormalities. But in 2014 she was diagnosed with cancer. The same year a review of her initial test showed it was inaccurate. But she was not informed of this until last year — six years after that test.

“The conduct of CervicalCheck and the HSE in my case is unforgivable,” she said outside the court, after

settling a case against the US laboratory subcontracted for the tests.

But the cruel treatment and neglect Vicky Phelan was subjected to has opened a Pandora’s box about cancer screening in Ireland.

British home secretary Amber Rudd resigned last week for telling lies about immigration policy.

But we have 17 dead women and hundreds who were not told of inaccurate tests in this cervical cancer screening scandal, and no one has taken responsibility.

At the heart of the scandal is the question of why women were not told about previous tests wrongly clearing them of cancer. Doctors were told to tell their patients in 2015 of false negative results, but they did not do that for a whole year.

HSE director general Tony O’Brien admitted on RTÉ’s Prime Time during the week that, yes, delays possibly could have compromised the treatment of women.

HSE director general Tony O’Brien, left, has ‘shown nothing but arrogance’ and is ‘more concerned with defending the indefensible than doing the right thing’ according to Vicky Phelan.

It had been decided that patients should be informed if earlier tests were wrong, or of any anomalies. But that did not happen. An inquiry will now look at why these wrong results were not shared in a timely manner and in some cases not at all.

But while the review process was triggered by a diagnosis of cancer, there has been a complete breakdown in communications around this.

Quite rightly, Ms Phelan and the public have turned their anger and attention on Mr O’Brien.

The Limerick mother tweeted this week: “Heads absolutely need to roll, in particular Tony O’Brien’s, who has shown nothing but arrogance and who is more concerned with defending the indefensible than doing the right thing.”

Heads absolutely need to roll, in particular Tony O'Brien's, who has shown nothing but arrogance and who is more concerned with defending the indefensible than doing the right thing #CervicalCheckScandal

— Vicky Phelan (@PhelanVicky) May 3, 2018

All of this has led to TDs claiming the HSE is “rotten” to the core and “dysfunctional”. And who could deny this, after the litany of failures and scandals under HSE bosses?

A report into maternity care at a Galway hospital this week noted a lack of skills, communication, and resources all contributed to failures, including the serious harm to and death of babies.

We also heard this week of the heartbreak and years of struggling by the parents of baby Mark Molloy to get justice after their boy died due to a lack of oxygen, shortly after his birth in Portlaoise.

The HSE in recent days was also forced to apologise to three women for failing to care for them when they were raped as children in a Galway foster home.

A string of failures and tragedies has occurred in the health service during Tony O’Brien’s tenure at the head of the HSE.

He was and still is the man in charge, and no matter what, the buck stopped with him over Vicky Phelan’s case. But the Government has been happy for him to stay and soak up the criticism.

Yesterday, Taoiseach Leo Varadkar again defended the decision not to fire the HSE boss. Trust needs to be restored in health services, he said, and there has been a failure of open disclosure. This is the same trust that was destroyed for Vicky Phelan.

But this scandal will not go away, especially with Sinn Féin proposing a Dáil motion of no confidence in Mr O’Brien next week.

Leo Varadkar.

We have been here so many times when it comes to accountability, with questions around responsibility in Government, the gardaí, the State-owned banks, and Irish Water, among groups others.

Is it not time for change? For accountability, for leadership, and responsibility?

Mr Varadkar said as much when he made his maiden speech in the Dáil upon being nominated as Taoiseach last June. He said he wanted a Government that was strong on ethics, adding: “I’ll demand of myself and my own

Government what, in the past, I insisted of others.” But you cannot have good ethics without accountability.

In recent years we have heard the Department of Public Expenditure secretary general Robert Watt surmise that it is indeed time to start dismissing those who do wrong in the public sector. He called for a debate on making it easier to dismiss employees in the public sector, in the way they can be sacked in the private sector.

“In our system we don’t have those sort of tools that are available in parts of the private sector,” Mr Watt said.

It is a national disgrace that time and again, those same public services escape scrutiny and accountability.

Instead, there is a silo mentality and a civil servant culture of omerta, a code of silence that prevents transparency, open disclosure, and above all responsibility.

Then those who are wronged are left to fight it out in the courts, in inquiries and tribunals, but more often than not without help, to get answers.

Tony O’Brien should and must go. The Government should fire him. It is that simple — even if he claims he was unaware of the cervical cancer controversy until recently.

As Health Minister Simon Harris this week celebrates with colleagues to mark the Fine Gael-Independent coalition’s two years in office, he should take note.

There has been no let-up in the flood of scandals and failures piling up in the health service.

Just look at run-down Hawkins House, the 50-year-old Department of Health building in Dublin, an apt symbol of the crumbling and crisis-hit health service.

It looks set to be demolished and replaced. The sandbags, though, are piling up outside the aged concrete structure.

It is time for Mr Harris to show leadership, to take control, to get accountability, or he will be in the firing line too.

It was Fine Gael that promised to close down the crisis-ridden HSE; it was Fine Gael that pledged to end the trolley crisis, and it is Fine Gael at the steering wheel as we hear the horrific stories of neglect perpetrated against the women of Ireland.

And all of this has come about because of one woman, one mother who stood up to the State and sought accountability over her cancer tests: Vicky Phelan, a national hero.