Neligan criticises Government policy

Health debate: A senior consultant has issued a blistering attack on Government policy and the Hanly report at the Fine Gael conference.

Mr Maurice Neligan, a consultant cardiac surgeon, said that "we have report after report after report, but for all that ever happens they might as well have been written by Hans Christian Andersen". He told the conference that reducing non-consultant hospital doctors' hours to comply with the EU working-time directive "will simply not happen" by the deadline next year. One major Dublin hospital alone would need 60 extra doctors so that junior doctors work no more than 58 hours a week. Instead there was "gobbledegook" from the Department and there would now be a "consultant provided rather than a consultant-led service".

If it meant sleeping in the hospital and putting up drips and going to see people who had fallen out of bed, "I think not and I think my colleagues of today think not also". However, a member of the Hanly taskforce warned that if the system was not changed, local hospitals would close in an unpredictable manner and "by 1,000 cuts".

Prof Gerard Loftus said consultant-provided services meant consultants would be part of a team, rather than operating a "monolithic" system. But he accepted that it was "very difficult for people to buy into something that they can't just see yet".