The involvement of more than half of the State's 65,000 health service employees in serious industrial unrest was an "appalling reflection" on the Department of Health, the leading hospital consultants' group said last night.
The secretary-general of the Irish Hospital Consultants' Association (IHCA), Mr Finbarr Fitzpatrick, said the handling of industrial relations by the Department over the past three years had contributed in no small way to the current overall difficulties.
The Department's policy of brinkmanship, he said, distracted attention from the existing problems. The different groups, the number involved, and the delay in solving the difficulties were a poor reflection on the performance of the Department. Mr Fitzpatrick also criticised the Minister for Health, Mr Cowen, saying he should be more pro-active.
Speaking at the IHCA annual general meeting, Mr Fitzpatrick listed the groups which had threatened, or carried out, industrial action in recent years: the State's 28,000 nurses, paramedics, ambulance drivers, craft workers, radiographers, junior doctors and district medical officers (GPs in charge of local district hospitals).
"All of those groups constitute over half of the employees of the health services. This cloud of industrial unrest is going on at the same time as problems of underfunding of the service and ever-increasing amount of people on hospital waiting lists. All we get from the Department of Health is foot-dragging and hand-washing," said Mr Fitzpatrick.
It had been said that the hepatitis C controversy "tore the heart" out of the Department, said Mr Fitzpatrick. But it was now time, for the good of the health services, for a proper recovery.
Hospital consultants, he said, were "constantly being lectured" by the Department about efficiency and effectiveness in the delivery of hospital services. "We are always hearing about accountability and transparency. It is high time the Department of Health developed similar accountability in their industrial relations policy or lack of it." Today the consultants will discuss a number of motions including the practice of closing hospital beds during the summer months to curtail expenditure, the underfunding of the health services and the provision of more step-down facilities for patients who no longer need acute care.
The meeting will be addressed by Dr Richard Seed, the controversial advocate of human cloning. An opposing view will be given by Prof Andrew Green. The IHCA president, Dr David Lillis, said the debate would address "the divergent views of doctors and scientists on the vexed question of human cloning".
