Leo and Simon’s strategy of ‘tea and sympathy’ does not deliver
VERY soon now, Health Minister Simon Harris will submit his PhD thesis expected to be entitled ‘The Efficacious Mass Distribution of Tea and Sympathy in Times of National Emotive Crisis’.
He will surely be accorded what the academic poshies would adjudge first-class honours.
Since late last April, when this travesty was unveiled to us via Vicky Phelan’s High Court settlement, Simon Harris has consistently laid out his case for being ‘Ireland’s most concerned man’. And he has few if any rivals for that dubious accolade.
Yes, revelations of this cancer smear test debacle happened before his watch, and indeed that of another former health minister, now Taoiseach, Leo Varadkar. They now make a very fine concerned pair.
Sympathy and concern are certainly laudable. But we have yet to learn of any practical use in that official emoting to help find real truth and plot a better way forward, in which women will be treated honestly in the medical system.
The biggest difficulty with sympathy and concern is that they are part of a political management device. Simply put, the strategy is talk, talk, and talk. Park in an inquiry and then tippy-tiptoe away.
True, this review by Dr Gabriel Scally has not found any evidence that issues with regard to CervicalCheck were brought to the attention of Mr Harris prior to April 2018. That was reportedly when the Department of Health woke up for the first time to a law case, brought by Ms Phelan and her husband, scheduled for hearing on April 19.
Dr Scally’s report does offer many longer-term grounds for hope.
He does not mince words when identifying a deeply embedded cultural problem, where a largely male group of senior medical professionals show a huge and reflexive failure to empathise in any meaningful way with women patients stricken with serious illness afflicting their reproductive systems.
Despite the continued conciliatory tone, the Government has mismanaged the cervical cancer scandal from the start. By inference the Mr Harris has acknowledged that, in recent times past, he has said things aimed at heading off political trouble.
He has now pledged to avoid statements which smack of a “knee-jerk reaction”.
It is a welcome but belated admission, even allowing for clear evidence that he was on occasion poorly served
Simply put, the strategy is talk, talk, and talk. Park in an inquiry and then tippy-tiptoe away
by senior officials in the Department of Health and in the HSE.
During the past five months we have been repeatedly reminded of the lamentable disconnects in a hit-and-miss health system, which delivers really good care every day to tens of thousands of people, but also shows alarming gaps which have dreadful human consequences.
Both Mr Harris and the Taoiseach have been equally guilty of over-promising results in unfeasible timeframes.
Notably, there have been promises that the more than 200 women stricken by this debacle would not have to fight court cases to get a remedy.
Clearly this failed to take account of the US-based laboratories, and more significantly their insurers, in all of this. There were also gross exaggerations about how quickly reviews and investigations could be done and the results of these delivered. It all smacked of telling people what they wanted to hear in a given time and place.