Irish Examiner view: HSE needs to be called to account

Child therapy services

Disabilities Minister Anne Rabbitte stormed out of a meeting with HSE officials when discussions broke down over lack of delivery of therapists to schools. Picture: Jim Coughlan

The ongoing scandal of inadequate therapy services for children came to a head this week when a meeting between the relevant minister and representatives of the HSE broke up in acrimony.

Disabilities Minister Anne Rabbitte stormed out of a meeting with HSE officials when discussions broke down over the specific issue of lack of delivery of therapists to schools. This comes as many media outlets reported on the experience of various schools around the country which are awaiting such therapist services even as classes have resumed for the autumn.

It is never a good sign when a meeting becomes associated with the term “storming out” — for one thing, the meeting will inevitably be rescheduled for a later date, and whatever decisions will eventually be reached are simply deferred. To give the minister her due, she has put the HSE on notice in the past to focus on providing therapists rather than on time-consuming reports, communicating that order to the organisation as long ago as March 2022; in June of that year, however, this newspaper reported that the HSE had defied the minister’s order.

If this and recent developments are taken as evidence, then clearly Ms Rabbitte and the HSE do not see eye to eye, to put it mildly. That need not preclude a working relationship, but more important lessons can be learned from the abrupt conclusion to this week’s meeting.

If a Government minister — with all the power and resources of her department at her disposal — is leaving meetings with the HSE in frustration at a lack of co-operation, then who can call that organisation to account?

It is understood that Ms Rabbitte’s specific issue in the meeting was a failure to present any clear rationale for the delays in providing therapists. If HSE officials can stonewall a minister in a face-to-face meeting, that is itself a striking indictment of that organisation’s lack of accountability. A lack of accountability that must change.

Where does RTÉ go from here?

The chaos at RTÉ continues, but the standard of jaw-dropping revelations set in recent months was so high that the latest discoveries have almost gone unnoticed.

This week the Oireachtas media committee heard about the array of car allowances at RTÉ, not to mention this newspaper’s revelation of the need for such expensive photographs of Fair City. RTÉ director general Kevin Bakhurst announced a hiring freeze this week — timely for an organisation losing millions in unpaid licence fees — and also dwelt on the possible sale of RTÉ’s Montrose campus.

“One of the things we are considering focusing on is about moving more staff and production out of Dublin and we’re totally focused on what value we can get from the site,” said Mr Bakhurst.

RTE director general Kevin Bakhurst announced a hiring freeze this week. Picture: PA

On the face of it, this seems a common-sense proposal.

RTÉ’s large campus occupies some of the most valuable real estate in the entire country and would no doubt fetch a handsome price from some ambitious developer if it went on the market.

With the growth in remote working during the pandemic — and the increasing sophistication of the technology which facilitates those working remotely — this seems a logical option. Many organisations now use a blend of remote and on-site work, and on the face of it RTÉ’s core business of programme-making would seem appropriate to such an approach.

One obvious drawback, however, is that if RTÉ were to move out of Montrose, where would it go?

We caught a glimpse of what may be expected if these plans harden into reality at this week’s committee meeting, when Galway Fine Gael TD Ciaran Cannon suggested Galway Airport would be an appropriate spot for RTÉ and TG4 to be sited together, asking if RTÉ would “contemplate moving out of Dublin lock, stock, and barrel”.

Cannon is to be complimented for the swiftness of his suggestion, but it may be just the first of many such pitches we hear from politicians and others. Readers can expect to hear from plenty of interested parties about the specific virtues of their areas — virtue uniquely suited to RTÉ’s needs for relocation.

Creating understanding

Yesterday, Sinn Féin leader Mary Lou McDonald revealed that she was returning to work after taking some time off to recover from surgery.

Ms McDonald said she had had a hysterectomy to remove tumours earlier in the summer, telling Ireland AM: “I lost my womb, my ovaries, so it was fairly significant surgery.”

Party affiliations will not prevent the Sinn Féin leader from receiving the well wishes of political opponents as she returns to action, and she also deserves credit for acknowledging that the surgery had “knocked her off course”, as she put it, rather than offering a blithe dismissal of the importance of rest and recovery after a serious operation.

Ms McDonald made another key point in her interview this week which also cuts across party political differences. Saying it was important to have conversations about women’s health in order to understand what women and girls experience, she said: “Everything from menstruation, menopause, we need to be able to have these conversations and men and boys need to be part of the conversation.”

In doing so, she is to be commended for speaking openly and honestly about her own surgery, and for inviting men and boys to participate in such discussions — the only way to create the understanding she mentioned.