Ó Broin sends written apology to senior civil servant he said should be fired

Sinn Féin housing spokesman Eoin Ó Broin has written to a senior civil servant he said should be fired to apologise for his comments.

Mr Ó Broin has already publicly apologised for the comments, which were reported by the Irish Daily Mail last weekend. During a discussion at a festival in Roscommon last month, Mr Ó Broin said he believed John McCarthy “should be sacked”.

Speaking on Thursday in Dublin, the party’s health spokesman David Cullinane said the comments were “wrong and I think Eoin has apologised”.

“My understanding is he has written to the individual involved and apologised to him which I think is the right course of action. We in Sinn Féin firmly believe in the independence of the Civil Service, it’s a really important cornerstone of democracy and you have to listen to all advices, all opinions even if you don’t agree with them and then as minister make decisions”

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Mr Cullinane said he did not think it would be his job to sack any civil servant were he made a minister in a Sinn Féin Government and he had been meeting with health officials in the two years since he was given responsibility for the brief.

“I do so because I believe you have to meet everybody, you have to listen to all opinions and voices. You are enriched by hearing from people even if you don’t agree with them,” he said.

Mr Cullinane also called for review of the circumstances under which a consultant was reportedly reappointed on an ad hoc basis to work in the HSE having been removed from his post-mortem duties in 2007 following controversy over the retention of baby’s organs after death. The reappointment is the subject of an RTÉ Investigates programme to air on Thursday evening.

The Waterford TD said that the ultimate responsibility for the issue lies with Minister for Health Stephen Donnelly, and also called on the Government to publish the human tissue bill which it has promised will make reforms in this area.

“We need answers in the first instance as to why Consultant A was rehired on an ad hoc basis, who was that person accountable to, what were the accountability mechanisms and governance mechanisms in place because it seems again there were clear failures and families will want answers. The Minister for Health will have to come out and provide those answers,” he said.

“Generally in healthcare it’s very chaotic, the minister in my view is not on top of all these issues, there’s bad planning, very slow to respond to all these crises, promises all of the time of action that doesn’t come”

“It’s high time the minister got his act together on all these issues and starts delivering and not lurching from one crisis to the next which is what we seem to be doing in health at the moment.”