O’Brien warns TDs to come up with plan for HSE

HEALTH chief Tony O’Brien has refused to resign, instead warning politicians they need to come up with a plan for the HSE because it was an “exercise in how not to do change management”.

He told TDs yesterday that he would “respectfully decline your invitation to resign without prejudice or otherwise”.

Instead he will take holidays in early July after the report of a scoping inquiry into the Cervical Check scandal is published, and not return.

Addressing the Oireachtas Health Committee, Mr O’Brien indicated he does not expect huge interest in the job when he vacates the position.

After seven years at the helm, he said there are “some doubts” about the standard of competition.

Fianna Fáil’s Stephen Donnelly (inset) put it to him that he should resign over the cancer scandal “without prejudice”.

“I take no joy in the call and I’m very conscious that you’ve given many years of public service to healthcare,” he said.

But Mr O’Brien hit back at the politicians.

He described the director general as the “one person who has to be personally accountable for every failure or mistake of 140,000 individuals who work in the health service”.

“It’s not a basis for accountability,” he said.

Mr O’Brien said there were “many good things” happening in the HSE but its establishment was “an exercise in how not to do change management”.

He added that he was originally appointed “to an organisation that was supposed to be down in the aftermath of the abolition of its board”.

Mr O’Brien admitted that there were “significant issues” but said that he was not informed of the impending scandal before it broke in the media.

He said he was not happy with the way the cancer scandal had developed “for multiple reasons”. He claimed that if he had been aware of Vicky Phelan’s case “in all of its magnitude, it would have been possible to put in place a number of steps to ensure the organisation was in a bet- ter place to deal with the fallout”.

Asked whether people in the HSE were afraid to raise concerns about issues, Mr O’Brien said he had a sign in his office that reads: “Speak truth to power.”

Health Minister Simon Harris told the same meeting that there was a “long road to travel to restore public confidence”.

He promised major change in the way the health service operates, saying: “The HSE has become too big to fail and too big to succeed.”

But when questioned on Mr O’Brien’s future, the minister said it was his “judgment” that creating a vacuum in the HSE would not help the current situation.

Mr O’Brien will today return to Leinster House for the third time in a week.

He will face more questions at Public Accounts Committee (PAC).

The HSE initially declined the PAC invitation for Mr O’Brien to attend, saying that it had come at short notice and he is focussed on the response to the cancer screening issue.

PAC chairman Seán Fleming last night said that the committee, which is the Dáil’s public spending watchdog, wants to quiz the HSE on the expenditure incurred on various cancer screening services, including the cost of outsourcing.