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Spinning Like a Top on Crumlin Cutbacks
Read more about: Fianna Fail, Fine Gael, Health, Policy, Progressive Democrats 
From last night’s debate on a private members motion (FG) on Crumlin cutbacks.
During the debate in the Dail, Ms Harney said: “I find it strange that when we ask hospitals to make efficiency savings, some hospitals decide that the most sensitive area is the area that should be cut first.”
Those nasty hospitals….taking spin to a whole new level. Depsite the outrage, this is the new briefing line – implying the hospital didn’t try to find efficiencies in the first place.
This is Green Party Press release sent out at 4.35pm yesterday – moments before Mary White went on Matt Cooper where she was clearly aware that cutbacks were to be made. Reading it you’d swear that all the then-proposed Crumlin cut-backs had been completely canceled. Not the case. Mary White was aware this was not the case when she was going on Matt Cooper.
“Green Party Deputy Leader Mary White TD has welcomed the news that cutbacks in Crumlin hospital services will not go ahead. Speaking ahead of a Dáil debate on the issue this evening, Deputy White said children should not be affected by budget deficits.
Deputy White said: “I welcome the news that planned closures for two wards and an operating theatre will not now go ahead at Crumlin Children’s Hospital. This means that surgeries will go ahead as planned and admission numbers will be maintained.
“The HSE plans to advance surgery for children with scoliosis, by scheduling further theatre sessions. This will help lower the numbers of children on waiting lists and help to improve the quality of life of those who are suffering.”
Deputy White said that she and her Green Party colleagues had worked together with the Minister for Health Mary Harney and the HSE to ensure a way forward could be found.
“Savings have been found that ensure children will not be affected by these cuts. I’m delighted that a solution has been found, particularly for the families involved, who have had such a difficult time. I am also pleased that there will be no reduction in the 8,843 outpatients as suggested by Fine Gael and that cut backs in admissions, estimated at 1,100, will not now be implemented. In a debate involving the health and welfare of children, we should have the facts, not scaremongering.”
Deputy White accused the opposition of making false claims. “It was said that children with scoliosis could not be treated under the National Treatment Purchase Fund. This is not the case. The Government has an obligation to ensure the most vulnerable in our society are not affected by cuts to budget expenditure and I am happy that today, we have been able to do that. I will continue to advocate the needs of children at Crumlin. Recession or no recession, cutbacks must not affect sick children.”
So the Greens are also taking spin to a new level.
Harney is an ass. Like O’Keefe and Hanafin, she seems to imagine that if she instructs an organisation to make a cut, it will somehow result in efficiencies. What they don’t seem to realise is that our health and education systems were never well-funded to begin with. Where waste occurs, is usually at a structural level. If they want to tackle the waste, they need to start making radical changes on structural level and that is not done by using crude spending cuts.
This is clear passing the book. If she’s unhappy with the areas where hospitals make their cuts then she should instruct them to make savings elsewhere. After all, isn’t that the influence and power the minister has???
Then again I wouldn’t be surprised if she hadn’t a clue where to make savings, that’s probably why she lets the hospitals do their own thing!
The problem with Crumlin is that it’s not a HSE run hospital, it gets funding from the HSE but they don’t hold they don’t run it. The Board of Management do and they are the ones who make the decisions on what’s cut and what’s saved.
BUT – the thing is, if Harney really cared, she would have intervened when the cuts were first announced and say you can’t do it that way, do it somewhere else….
I say get rid of all the managers and administrators that are surplus to requirements(and there’s alot of those) and that’ll save a tidy sum…
Plus it’ll get rid of alot of the bureaucracy involved!
We could start by transferring a few hundred out of the many hundreds (is it 500 or 800 that Vincent Browne keeps referring to) from the Department of Health (which has almost nothing to do what with the HSE having responsibility for the deliver of services) to the department of social welfare to man the dole offices. And send the rest to the gulag or a career break, keep 80 or so to formulate policy on a more detailed level than “make people better!” and to make Mary’s lunch and deal with her corns. How million did I say there I wonder? Enough to cover the cervical cancer vaccine at least.
Later on I’ll be back to demonstrate how we could make big savings by taking out 75% of those senior level managers who went from working for the regional health boards to working for the not so slimmed down but very centralised HSE. Something they did in NI when merging their health boards. No frontline staff need be hurt in the making of these cuts.