Harney: Please stop identifying problems

In case you missed it, Peter O Rourke is a consultant in Letterkenny – yes we are supposed to hate them but hear this one out.

Senior consultant surgeon Peter O’Rourke has revealed he and two colleagues were being paid to sit around doing nothing while operating theatres were lying empty at Letterkenny General Hospital, Co Donegal.

“The Government is paying me a large sum of money to sit around doing nothing,” said the bored surgeon, who earns around €225,000 a year, almost eight times the average industrial wage.

Despite lists of people in pain waiting for hip and knee replacements, the hospital has put off all so-called “elective” procedures until at least next year in a drive to save money. It has budget overruns of €2.7m.

Dr O’Rourke, who candidly pointed out that the patient was the real victim, said he was “frustrated and depressed” about the situation.

“I’m sitting here in my office looking out my window at a digger piling up clay on the site of the new emergency department when I should be at work in an operating theatre.”

Dr O’Rourke said he could still perform day surgery every three weeks but was told there would be no elective surgery until the new year.

The rest of his story is over at the Irish Indo. Its an insight into the manner in which cuts to budgets directly impact on the provision of services despite the claims to the contrary. Whatever he was getting paid, it would be the service provision that gets curtailed before other avenues are followed through.

Increasingly the spokesperson for glib, trite statements -, Mary Harney our unsackable Minister for misery Health, offers this solution:

“There are waiting lists for outpatient appointments at Letterkenny Hospital, perhaps that consultant and others could apply themselves to seeing those outpatients,” she said. “I would appeal to the consultant in question to talk with the hospital, his colleagues in the hospital and hospital management to resolve whatever issues arise on the ground.”

She said people needed to be pragmatic about the approach they adopted. “I would urge everybody in this time of huge economic challenges to look at solutions and not to be always identifying problems,” she said.

Ms Harney said there was no more money for the health service this year and there would be less money next year.

“Over €1 billion in reductions will be required in the provision of the public health services next year,” she said.

Yup, shut your whingeing about patients who won’t get procedures next year let alone this year and get your shirt sleeves rolled up. But really, all in all, it isn’t Harney’s problem.

“I can’t impose a solution from Dublin… only the people that work in the hospital can solve those problems within the budget that is available this year,” she said.