Time to tackle overcrowding at the very top

EVER since Micheál Martin merged the health boards and created the Health Service Executive, we have been told the HSE is overstuffed with managers and not enough frontline staff. Everyone knows bureaucracy is stifling the health service, and everyone knows that has to change. You might reasonably think, then, that change would come from the very top, in the Department of Health itself. Instead, where once there was a minister and junior minister, that rose to three in the last government. Now, we have five.

As well as Simon Harris, who has overall Cabinet responsibility, Finian McGrath has special responsibility for Disabilities; Helen McEntee for Mental Health and Older People; Catherine Byrne oversees the National Drugs Strategy; and Marcella Corcoran-Kennedy is charged with Health Promotion.

The annual bill for these five people, between salaries, allowances, drivers and special advisers, could be as high as €1.34m. While that is a considerable sum, they no doubt would argue that it would be a drop in the ocean compared with the funding the health service receives.

That may be true, but it’s hardly the point, because the optics are dreadful. This week, seven people died of flu. The outbreak has stretched the HSE to the point where more than 600 people were on trolleys in our hospitals waiting for beds. Unsurprisingly, with so many crowding into emergency departments, there has also been an outbreak of the winter vomiting bug.

Mr Harris has a rare talent for answering a straight question with a straight answer. That rookie confidence was less in evidence this week as he faced his biggest crisis to date. Fortunately for him, he has four colleagues to draw upon for support and creative solutions. Or, at least, that’s how it should work. Instead, despite a drop in the numbers on trolleys, this problem is far from gone away.

So we need to ask one question. What on Earth are we doing paying €1.3m a year to five ministers who, between them, can’t seem to get one important job done?