asked the Minister for Health when it is intended to set up a management board for the proposed new Tallaght hospital, County Dublin; the suggested composition of such a board, and the method whereby staff will be appointed to service the board.
Ceisteanna—Questions. Oral Answers. - Tallaght (Dublin) Hospital.
8.
I propose to establish by order under the Health (Corporate Bodies) Act, 1961 a board to plan, build and manage a general hospital at Tallaght and I have put a draft order incorporating my proposals before all the bodies concerned for their views. When I have received and considered these views, I will make the order without delay.
The board will, initially, be responsible for the planning and building of the hospital and it is proposed that the membership, at this stage, will comprise about 14 members, including nominees of the Eastern Health Board, the hospital boards of the Adelaide and Meath Hospitals and the University of Dublin.
It is proposed that the normal procedure for the appointment of staff to health bodies will apply in the case of the proposed board.
I understood the Minister to say that the board would be comprised of nominees of his and of certain of the participating hospitals. Is that correct?
Including nominees of the Eastern Health Board, the hospital boards of the Adelaide and Meath hospitals and the University of Dublin.
Will those be nominees of the board and of the Eastern Health Board as of right or will the bodies which are to participate be required to submit a panel of nominees?
They will be required to submit a panel.
Is this the usual procedure which has been followed in the setting up of hospital boards?
This is the procedure I propose to follow in this instance and I understand it has been widely welcomed by all the people concerned.
Is the Minister not aware that it has been traditional practice that participating health bodies and hospital boards are allowed to name their own nominees on to any new board and that this represents a radical departure, allowing the Minister his choice out of panels which are to be put forward to him by the participating bodies?
It is a very sensible and wise procedure. If the Minister is appointing a board for which he will be responsible, which will have the expenditure of vast sums of public money, it is only right that the Minister would retain the final right of appointment. All the interests will be met by the procedure that I propose. I am not aware that there is anything new or different about it and my information is that what I propose in this order has been widely welcomed by all the interested bodies.
(Interruptions.)
Is the Minister suggesting that the Eastern Health Board would not be a responsible body to propose their own nominees as they did for the board of James Connolly Hospital, for the board of St. James's Hospital and as was done in relation to the board of Beaumont Hospital?
It is not my policy that the Minister for Health, responsible to this Parliament, should be a rubber stamp for anybody in this country.
They will all be rubber stamps for the Minister.
This is not an attempt to pose a truculent question but does the Minister not consider that a future Minister for Health, not necessarily himself, would regard this precedent as an opportunity to increase the potential for direct patronage. Does he not feel that in all our efforts to develop power and to involve people, in all the florid phrases of the various White Papers, this is running against the tide of progress?
We are merely getting into an argument which is not relevant.
I want to put the Minister on notice that this order in that form will be opposed when it is published.
(Interruptions.)
Does the criterion which the Minister has set before us that he should have the final say as to who should be on the boards include people who disagree with him politically?
The Deputy should study what I said. I can only appoint people to this new board from panels submitted by various representative bodies. That is a perfectly fair, legitimate and wise procedure. Otherwise one would find the Minister for Health or any Minister of Government simply acting as a rubber stamp for subsidiary bodies which I do not think is desirable particularly in this case because this is a building board which will have the responsibility for the expenditure of about £20 million of public funds. It is very important that the board should be appointed in the way that I have suggested.
(Interruptions.)
Why did the Minister not adopt the same procedure for Beaumont Hospital?
The draft order for the Beaumont board was prepared and settled between all the interests concerned before I assumed office, so I did not change it. But I found myself in the position, in appointing the Beaumont board, of being practically a rubber stamp so that I could not accede to the wishes of various women's organisations and appoint a woman member to that board and I determined that I was not going to be in that position in future.
(Interruptions.)
The manner in which the Beaumont board was drafted by my predecessor ensured that I had no scope whatever to appoint a woman member if I wanted to and I could not accede to the wishes of women's organisations.
The Minister is not going to wriggle out of it that way. I am glad he acknowledges that Deputy Corish was the one who started Beaumont Hospital and not himself.