The Health Minister has serious questions to answer after a leaked audio recording emerged where senior officials in his department allegedly discuss serious financial issues involving the HSE, Labour has claimed.
The Party’s health spokesman Duncan Smith has written to Health Minister Stephen Donnelly to demand answers to what he claims are “extraordinary questions of governance, recruitment and accountability” raised by the alleged leaked recording.
Sinn Fein also claimed the recording is a damning indictment of major strategic failings in government health policy.
The Sunday Business Post today published what is allegedly a recorded meeting of Health Department officials discussing serious issues involving the HSE.
Deputy Smith said: “The leaked recording of an internal Department of Health meeting reported in today’s Business Post raises extraordinary questions over how the health service is reportedly being run and shines a light on some extremely worrying dynamics at the top of our health service.
“The reports will be crushing for people waiting on much needed mental health services to hear that the HSE would not be able to spend the money allocated to them in last year’s Budget.
“Similarly, the reduction in recruitment targets from 10,000 full-time staff to 5,500 on the say-so of senior civil servants really damages the credibility of the Minister for Health both in setting and delivering these crucial targets at Budget time.
“With hundreds of millions of euros reported in financial adjustments there will be further concern that the dysfunction and crisis in our health service goes deeper and is more fundamental than most people dared to believe.
“I have written to the Minister for Health today to highlight my concerns and intend on raising the matter with him in the Dáil this week.”
Sinn Féin’s health spokesman David Cullinane TD said the recording highlights the historic failings of government policy.
He added: “The leaked comments of civil servants charged with overseeing health expenditure is a damning indictment of failed government policy over the last two decades.
“Missed recruitment and delivery targets are only the surface of the matter - these failings are happening because the government has not invested in training and retaining enough healthcare professionals.
“Throwing money at the problem this late in the day has only served to highlight the historic failings of government policy.
“This has led to a severe workforce crisis in health, which is made worse by legacy IT issues.
“Seventeen years on, the HSE still does not have an integrated financial management system and other key eHealth reforms; such as unique patient identifiers.
“These failures by successive Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael governments to deliver on key reforms has led to the dysfunction in health governance reported in the Business Post.”
