A public health specialist has described feeling "blacklisted" by senior health board management after vocalising concerns about patient safety in an interview with The Irish Times.
The doctor, who spoke after the Minister for Health's threat to a specific group of senior public health specialists, said: "I cannot preside over the dishonesty that is the Republic's public health service anymore."
"We have a culture of complacency in the way that infectious disease is dealt with," the doctor said.
Describing how the chance availability of two public health doctors had prevented a major outbreak of gastroenteritis in one of the country's premier hotels, the doctor referred to the "wing and a prayer and grace and favour" attitude of health service managers. "It stuck in my craw when a grateful American tourist expressed his appreciation for the impressively swift response of the State's health service," the doctor said.
"I resent the Minister's reference to our alleged 'total abandonment of responsibility' and feel that it should be redirected to management and their failure to deal with this issue over a nine year period."
Emphasising that the dispute was fundamentally about the need for prevention to be given equal priority to treatment, the doctor said the Republic "urgently and badly needs a properly structured 24-hour preventive health service".