Easy to trace how useless HSE managers have been

Th i s S t a t e h a s g o n e ma d outsourcing almost everything in recent years, but expecting people with a deadly disease to contact those they might have infected is a step too far.

Admit i t , would y ou s end t e xt messages to your friends and associates telling them you have a disease that has killed nearly 2,000 people and sickened tens of thousands – and that you may have passed it on to them?

Well that’s what the HSE expects of individuals who t ested positive for Covid- 19 because this dysfunctional organisation didn’t bother to hire enough tracing staf f to do the j ob themselves.

Since March we have been told by the Government and the HSE the country is facing a threat like no other and, while most people have taken this on board, those barking out the warnings appear to have ignored their own advice.

The HSE’S decision to outsource contact tracing to those with the virus last Monday undermined what little confidence the public had in the health service to control the disease.

The simple fact is that testing and tracing were supposed to be the cornerstones of the fight against the coronavirus but the HSE didn’t bother to hire enough staff to carry it out properly.

To add insult to injury this disclosure came at a time when the public i s facing the most severe restrictions on commercial and social life anywhere in Europe for the second time this year.

Now we find, behind all the spoofing on the part of Micheal Martin and Leo Varadkar, the health service is the shambles it always was and can’t do its job.

To hear the chairman of the National P u b l i c Hea l t h E merg e n c y Te a m modelling group Professor Philip Nolan claim nobody expected the tracing system to come under so much pressure so early in winter is beyond belief.

Does he not remember it has been routine to have 700 pati ents waiting on trollies in previous years when there was only the f lu to contend with?

“It i s disappointing ”, he said. It’s more than that Phil, it’s a disaster as it means around 10,000 people who potentially have the disease may go untraced and will spread it to others.

“What this demonstrates is we need to continue to do that over the next six weeks so that we are better prepared on the other side of the six weeks than we appear to be now,” he added.

Could this not have been done in the 32 weeks since the beginning of the pandemic instead of waiting for another lockdown to begin?

Does he forget the HSE hired recruitment f irm CPL which then of fered contact tracers zero- hours contracts and was paid € 3.2million since the beginning of the pandemic. Maybe when they’re offering such lousy terms it’s not surprising they can’t get staff.

Many of these problems stem from a pathological fear on the part of the State of hiring workers on decent wages and conditions.

This is evident in the disclosure staff recruited for the health service’s followup teams were denied a guarantee of any hours – and sick pay only if they contracted Covid- 19. People Before

Profit TD Richard Boyd Barrett hit the nail on the head when he said the zerohours contracts “speaks volumes about the Government’s failed Covid strategy”.

Also, if this is a national emergency could Defence Force specialists not have been brought in to fill the vacuum until permanent staff were recruited?

Once again the people are being failed by the Government and State agencies, yet they are expected to adhere to the new lockdown.

You didn’t need a cr ystal ball to predict there would be a surge in cases when the schools reopened and the restrictions were eased.

And seeing the Government has chosen the yo- yo approach to dealing with the virus, it’s almost certain there will be another wave i n Ja nuar y/ Febr uar y i f t h e Level 5 comes to an end in early December.

Because the HSE appears t o hav e an av e r si on t o proper planning, it is also li kely a similar trace and track overload could occur again. For unfortunately the authorities in this country fail to learn from mistakes so go on to repeat them.

Remember we were told it would never be allowed to happen again after nearly 1,000 people died in the country’s nursing homes?

In May I stood outside the Dealgan Nursing Home i n Dundalk, where 22 older people lost their lives, yet it now seems those in similar settings are again under threat.

Ye s t e r d ay, t h e di r e c t o r of t h e Nightingale Nursing Home i n Co Galway had to call on Joe Duffy ’s Liveline to appeal for help and staff to save the lives of her residents after 22 of 24 of them tested positive for Covid- 19.

“We are trying to keep our residents alive... we really feel abandoned,” Patricia Macgabhann said.

Many members of the public feel the same way as the only thing the Government has done successfully so far was awarding themselves a pay rise.

While their frontline staff have been heroes, HSE management continue to excel at being utterly useless.

Authorities fail to learn from mistakes so go on to repeat them