A hint that Harris might be up to hardest job of all

EVERY January a minister for health pretends to be astonished at the crisis in Irish hospitals – it’s Groundhog Day. Panic at hospital A&Es is an annual event with its own protocols, like Santa on Christmas Eve. At its peak, the minister looks down the lens of a television camera with a furrowed brow and pledge this is the last time it will happen.

It has been a highlight of the winter programme in Government for as long as most of us can remember, so why did Simon Harris and the HSE appear to be so surprised last week?

The HSE execs did their best to mirror their political boss’s startled reaction but they looked more like wooden actors in the rear of a pantomime horse.

The HSE has dutifully played this role since its foundation 12 years ago, when it was set up as a scapegoat to take blame for the failures of its political bosses.

And the well-flagged meeting in the minister’s office in the department was not so much the promised rumble-in-the-jungle as a meet-andgreet in Poolbeg Street.

It was also a PR stunt to divert anger and attention from the scandal of our health service and the minister – and to lay the blame at the HSE’s door.

This is the minister in charge of our health budget – 19.9% of all government spending when the EU average health spend is 15%.

Yes, we spend more per capita on health than any country in the EU – an estimated €14.97bn this year – and the health service is our biggest employer.

Yet our health service has some of the worst outcomes in the EU, as news bulletins have reported from hospitals recently. But I know from experience that once patients make it into hospital, they receive excellent care. The health service needs leadership – someone with the breadth of vision and political courage to begin again. Money alone will not fix our health service – it has been regularly patched together and topped up with money but it is beyond repair. It needs careful deconstruction and to be rebuilt again from the ground up. Would 30-year-old Simon Harris, pictured, forsake all other ambitions – it will need a minimum of five years – and make restoring the Irish health service his ultimate aspiration? Time will tell but here is a small insight into Mr Harris’s character: on Thursday, he buckled to pressures and said he was ‘very sorry’ for the chaos in the A&Es but resisted apologising.

IHAVE never thought too much about the difference between saying ‘sorry’ and ‘apologising’ but that sort of Jesuitical grammarian would have explained the difference to Simon Harris.

‘I apologise’ claims accountability for the problem. For example, ‘I apologise for being late’ communicates that I am responsible for whatever caused me to be late.

‘I’m sorry’ is more general and communicates a statement of empathy for a situation you may or may not have caused. But saying ‘I apologise’ makes a stronger statement of accountability. Saying he was sorry rather than apologising earlier meant Mr Harris was avoiding accountability. But his unequivocal apology later means he is accountable and is ultimately administratively responsible for the chaos in the Department of Health. At the risk of appearing patronising, his acceptance of ministerial responsibility is encouraging and his maturity gives a reason to hope when the prognosis for the health service appears to be despair. Ministers with leadership ambitions must make a choice in health. To survive politically, they need to weather the seasonal crises, commission reports into the worst calamities and hope to escape untainted – then emerge blooded for the big job.

Look at his predecessors: Varadkar always looked like a locum dispensing vitamins and soundbytes until the permanent minister arrived; James Reilly wore his medal of office like a wrecking ball; Micheál Martin answered every crisis with another report; health severely tested the courage of the last volunteer there, Mary Harney, and it all but destroyed her career.

Will the young Harris go through the motions and ‘survive’, or will he be the first visionary health minister since Dr Noel Browne? The agonies of the challenge were engraved in his writings and etched on Dr Browne’s face.

Has baby-faced Harris the character to tear it down and build a health service we can rely on and he can be proud of? THE Taoiseach should appoint a Man Flu Czar to take charge through the crisis.

I have heard demeaning descriptions of ‘man flu’ from women complaining that their designated male has misdiagnosed a common cold as flu.

A laboratory will decide whether or not it is the AH3 virus, but suffering men now need a czar to champion for their cause. MAN flu was not the inspiration for the political catfight between the female ministers in Meath – and I hear it could descend into mud wrestling in the party rooms.

The Chief Whip complained that junior health minister Helen McEntee does not even say hello to her – and Ms McEntee doesn’t deny ignoring Regina Doherty but says that the Chief Whip’s public remarks are ‘inappropriate’.

And Ms McEntee intends to raise this issue at a party meeting – presumably after discussing the other crisis in her department.