O’BRIEN’S ATTACK IS HARRIS’S OPPORTUNITY

‘CAN someone not take him aside now and tell him this is not about him, not by a long shot? This was never about him, but he doesn’t seem to realise that.’ That was Vicky Phelan, speaking about Tony O’Brien’s petulant departure from the top job in the HSE in May.

At the weekend, O’Brien returned to the theme of his unjust treatment and premature departure. The PAC hearings were a ‘kangaroo court’, and Health Minister Simon Harris was ‘a frightened little boy... running scared of headlines’ and lacking ‘courage in the face of a difficult political and media onslaught’.

Mr O’Brien admitted the HSE’s initial response to the CervicalCheck debacle had been a ‘trainwreck’. But ‘who was the leader of this trainwreck?’ asked Stephen Teap, whose late wife Irene received two false negatives on her smear tests. The fact that Mr O’Brien is still bitter, as Mr Teap put it, over his own treatment, and is still nursing grudges against the politicians and the media over the manner of his departure, suggests he still reckons it’s ‘all about him’.

It should have been all about his patients, all about the women and their families, all about the people who put their trust in the executive he headed. But nobody was sacked, on his watch, and when push came to shove, and his own position was the one on the line, it seems Mr O’Brien’s overwhelming pity was for himself.

The HSE is the biggest organisation ever created in this country, far too big for any one man to be across all its divisions and responsibilities. So Mr O’Brien’s departure gives Simon Harris an opportunity he must seize. The HSE needs to be broken up into areas such as primary care, hospitals, mental health, community services. And instead of a single boss, it needs a board with the remit to create a structure built on accountability and one that is itself accountable to the public. Most of all, though, it needs a senior management structure defined by one quality: empathy.