The government must have more concern for victims of abuse, writes Lucinda Creighton
The Health Information and Quality Authority (HIQA) report into the horrific baby deaths in Portlaoise hospital is a stark reminder of the deadly consequences of parochial politics mixed with an unreformed public sector.
It is simply not good enough for Minister for Health Leo Varadkar to say that he can’t discipline anyone over the baby deaths in Midland Regional Hospital in Portlaoise. The minister justified this on the basis that, if he attempted to do so, it could expose the taxpayer to major compensation claims.
There is something really rotten in our culture of patient safety care when what the Government fear more than disciplining those who have failed to do their job is how much money they might have to pay them for addressing the problem.
If ever there was a stark reminder of the necessity for public sector reform, it is the tragedies that have befallen Portlaoise Hospital.
At the beginning of 2014, Mark and Roisin Molloy requested to meet me to discuss the tragic circumstances surrounding the death of their son, Mark Jr. He was one of the babies who were the subject of the RTÉ Prime Time documentary.
When we met, they were campaigning for two demands, one was an independent HIQA report, which came after again considerable media and political pressure by the Molloys.
The second was open disclosure legislation; again, after much media and political noise that they generated with my support and others, the former Minister for Justice Alan Shatter announced that the Government was to introduce an open disclosure regime to Ireland.
Over one year later, there is no open disclosure legislation and an HIQA report whose findings cannot be met with real accountability.
With no accountability for failure, despite their third call for a national maternity plan for the country, this will be another report left to gather dust.
There was a time when Leo Varadkar talked of facing down the trade union leadership, who have opposed tooth and nail performance reviews and accountability within the HSE for almost a decade.
Now it’s election season, the desire for reform is a distant faded memory. Now it is about conforming to coalition colleagues so they can slice up the electorate in half between tax cuts and public sector pay restoration. Meanwhile, there is no restoration in our public services and our maternity services suffer.
Ireland needs to move swiftly to a robust system of open disclosure. While the HSE has piloted systems of open disclosure without the existence of a so-called apology law on the statute books, many clinicians may be fearful of acknowledging all wrong doing from the outset in case they will be sued.
In over 40 US states, medical practitioners can provide all information and apologise without the evidence provided being admissible in court which prevents the kind of feet dragging that the families in Portlaoise had to endure.
Crucially, it allows families to access the truth and to be treated with some dignity by doctors, while avoiding the needless secrecy and denial which has caused so much heartache to Roisin and Mark Molloy, along with many other families.
Laws change practices and culture. Quite clearly, the culture in the HSE and the practices in Portlaoise hospital failed the patient, and it is up to the legislators to respond decisively. This is not a knee-jerk reaction, this is something that should have been done many years ago and the Minister for Health should use these tragic incidents as the right time to push through the necessary legislation.
Accountable
For more than 15 years, the State fought against Louise O’Keefe in her attempts to hold it in some part accountable for the sexual abuse she endured in Dunderrow National School. While the Supreme Court and the High Court in Ireland found against Ms O’Keefe in her legal claims, the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) overturned these decisions.
The State hid behind the Courts and lawyers for far too long for Louise, and while justice has finally been served, a much greater process of open disclosure in Ireland is needed to bring about a cultural change in how the State defends itself.
This would be much more sympathetic to the victim, who should be the focus of our concern.
Thankfully the protection systems in place today for our children are unparalleled to what Louise O’Keefe lived under, and similarly the standard of maternity care in Ireland has equally improved. Ireland is compared favourably internationally.
Neither of these realities, however, should mean that we can rest on our laurels or that legislators can hide behind the improved systems that are in place.
In business, Irish people have strived to be world beaters. In sport, we have individuals and teams that have won at the highest international levels. Why can’t Irish politics feed into that same ambition to meet the highest standards of governance?
We must raise our game and put in place the best standards, with the greatest possible level of accountability, in order to ensure that no more families will be failed as the Molloys have been.
I hope for the sake of Mark and Roisin Molloy – and the other families that brought about the review – that the political system can reach its potential and provide these families with the safeguards that patients in 2015 require. Even if it means challenging the orthodoxy and vested interests of public service accountability.
Further excuses are the last thing people in Portlaoise or Galway, or any other hospital where maternity care has been found wanting, need.
Truth, honesty and action and, above all, compassion from our public system will make the tragic death of their babies seem at least slightly more bearable.