Government wants to retain Dr Scally to investigate issues arising out of his report... though not to quiz bureaucrats
THE Government wants to see Dr Gabriel Scally retained for 12 months to further investigate issues from his report but there is no desire for a full public inquiry that would question doctors, the Health Service Executive or health officials for their conduct.
The investigation would fall short of a full commission of inquiry and it would be expected that Dr Scally would be paid a salary.
However Labour TD Alan Kelly, who has taken a leading role in trying to get to the bottom of the CervicalCheck scandal, wants to see top HSE and Department of Health officials subjected to a proper inquiry.
Mr Kelly said that at a meeting with Dr Scally last week, he said that the ‘HSE must not be allowed to investigate the HSE’.
As of now it does not appear that any HSE official or Department of Health employee will face any sanction over the scandal. This comes despite Health Minister Simon Harris telling the Irish Mail on Sunday in April that there had been ‘gross incompetence’ in the health service. He also said that facts had been kept from him.
Government sources said this weekend that they are looking at a number of options for further inquiries. Taoiseach Leo Varadkar and Minister Harris will decide after consultations with the Cabinet, the opposition and three patients representatives, Vicky Phelan, Stephen Teap and Lorraine Walsh.
The options being looked at by the Government are:
A full commission of inquiry, appoint a judge. (This option is not favoured by Government.)
Let Dr Scally do what he wants to do, which is stay on for the next 12 months, implement the recommendations and conduct three further reports, mainly into the issues he has highlighted around the CPL lab in Texas that was used up to 2012.
A hybrid inquiry which sees Dr Scally retained and another parallel process.
No further inquiries. (This option is not favoured by the Government.)
Dr Scally, a Belfast-born doctor who served as director of public health with NHS South of England, has also agreed to go before the Oireachtas Health Committee.
However ministers appear to be closing ranks and a series of briefings over the weekend to this paper did not indicate any willingness to fully investigate HSE or Department of Health officials. Government sources have admitted that what Dr Scally discovered was ‘a complete and utter mess’.
The Government will meet with Labour’s health spokesman Alan Kelly before deciding what to do next. Mr Kelly wants to see the HSE and Department of Health officials investigated.
‘We need to get to the bottom of who did what – the where, when
‘Nobody was at home minding the shop’
and why in relation to the HSE, the Department of Health and maybe some other organisation,’ Mr Kelly said yesterday.
‘In particular we need to start with the fact that the board wasn’t in place from an accountability point of view down to the management levels, all the way down into where cancer screening and cervical screening fitted in the HSE and why it wasn’t in the priority zone it should have been,’ he added.
Mr Kelly points to the section of the Scally Report that says there was a ‘systemic failure’ in the health service. Mr Kelly says this is because people in the health service will not make decisions.
‘Why was there a systemic failure?’ asks Mr Kelly. ‘Scally says, “systemic failure”. Well, systemic failure happens because people make decisions – or more likely don’t make decisions – in the HSE. In this scenario, nobody was at home minding the shop.
‘There was nobody at home ensuring that the audit was being done correctly. Doing an audit was a good decision. Not ensuring that it was implemented and done correctly was the big scandal.
‘The fact is that nobody was analysing or monitoring how it was happening, what it was achieving, how people were being communicated with, the scale of it. There was no reporting of it to the scale necessary. People didn’t do their jobs. We need to get the bottom of why this was.
‘There has to be accountability. I saw through the Public Accounts Committee and the Health Committee hearings that, simply put, there was a**e-covering going on.’
Dr Scally says that in his report there was no ‘conspiracy’ or ‘cover-up’. Nevertheless Mr Kelly says that there should be ‘accountability’. Mr Harris has also said that a new HSE board will be established soon and accountability legislation will be introduced.
Mr Kelly says that any inquiry that is set up should investigate the HSE. ‘We need to get to the bottom of this,’ he said. ‘And this will need some sort of enquiry, it should have a short timeframe and very tight terms of reference. I believe it should be led by Dr Scally because he has a lot of the information already. And I believe that if necessary it should be done in conjunction with a judge.
‘I spoke to Dr Scally and he said under no circumstances should the HSE be allowed to investigate themselves.