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Mary Harney to face Vote of No Confidence Next Week
Read more about: Health, Irish Election, Irish Politics, Labour Party, Policy, Progressive Democrats
Labour are going to introduce a motion of no confidence in the Minister for Health Mary Harney in the Dail next week. Details of the motion are below the fold.
We ask everyone to contact their local FF/Green/Indp TDs either by phone,fax or email and ask them to support the vote of no confidence in Harney when it is introduced next week
From Labour Press Release:
NOTICE OF MOTION
That Dail Eireann
Expressing its serious concerns about disclosures of major failures in cancer care services at the Midlands General Hospital, Portlaoise, including the failure to diagnose breast cancer in nine women who had presented for mammograms and the recall of a further 97 women who had undergone ultrasound scans at the hospital;
Deploring the way in which the women have been treated subsequent to these disclosures, including the failure to provide adequate counselling for those who have had to undergo surgery and the fact that women who had undergone scans first heard on news bulletins that they might be recalled;
Noting that concern had previously been expressed about the adequacy of equipment and facilities at Portlaoise;
Condemning the failure of the Department of Health and the HSE to ensure the provision of cancer screening and treatment services in which the public can have full confidence;
Urging the public, nothwithstanding these alarming failures to continue to present for screening and assessment;
Noting that the HSE was the creation of Minister Harney and that it has failed to deliver the improvements promised in the health service;
Believing in the principle of political accountability for such shocking failures in our health system;
Has no confidence in the Minister for Health, Mary Harney TD.
Was that a deliberate typo?
lol im tempted to leave it but it has been edited, for those of you reading after I have corrected the title, it read MAry Harey for a considerable period of time.
That will teach me to type on the go
Something is seriously wrong with our political system since someone has to vote to remove her. People vote and elect her. And again, and again. And now the elected people vote to remove her? Much a do about nothing? Before Health when she managed immigration, it was… an obvious failure. Health got much worse during her management of it. But people will still for some strange reason vote for her. And against her.
Mary Harney, against insuperable odds, including non-cooperation from Bertie Ahern, has done a very good job.
Her problem is that her huge commitment to reform has been frustrated by sectoral interests - trade union intransigence (aided & abetted by Ahern); the civil service mentality at Head Office - and the legacy of Martin; Woods and other imcompetents that made a Horlicks of Health (like O’Rourke & Cullen in Transport).
Bertie sure knows how to pick duds.
Mary Harney has but one concern. Care for the patients at affordable cost. That means pruning out the wasteful administration; duplication and sheer incompetent work practices that crept in under Martin’s watch - while he played at being the smoking missionary - ignoring the job he was paid to perform.
When the nuns and the Masons ran the hospitals, there was discipline; the wards were clean and patient care was paramount.
Enter government - and we have the same mess that we see everywhere their dead hand descends. Waste; incompetence; duplication; trade union interference; cost overruns; top heavy administration;
CHAOS.
Harney is doing a good job. Let her get on with it.
Bertie gave her a dead man’s pass when he “Agreed” to let her be Minister of Health. He knew it was a hot potato and hoped to score off his fury at the popularity & competence of the PD Ministers - the only ones who put in an honest day’s work.