The Taoiseach speaks about responsibility. There is only one responsibility at issue here and that is the responsibility to the people who went into Tallaght hospital to have an X-ray taken. As the Taoiseach said, there were more than 700,000 X-rays done in that period of time and I imagine that almost every one of those patients is worried about whether their X-ray was one of the 58,000 not examined by a radiologist. I understand 23,000 X-rays have not yet been reviewed. The first priority is to get those reviewed as quickly as possible and I want the Taoiseach to tell me how quickly that will be done.
Second, the people concerned who went in to that hospital for X-rays must be told whether there were X-rays included in these 58,000 that were not examined, given the all-clear if that is the case or told that there is a problem. That must be done as a matter of urgency.
The Taoiseach said this matter came to light in early 2009 and there is other information that it was coming to light in 2008. We are told general practitioners were making inquiries about this matter as far back as last summer yet it would appear that nothing was done about it until the new chief executive was appointed to the hospital in December when he found out about it. Having listened to his interview this morning, I presume somebody told him there was a big problem with X-rays that had not been examined by radiologists. He took some action to deal with it. What happened between the time somebody in the hospital found out that this was the practice and the time the new chief executive found out? Why was it not dealt with until the new chief executive was appointed?
The new chief executive says he told the Minister for Health and Children about the matter in December of last year but the Minister said this morning she did not really know the scale of the problem until yesterday. I find this unbelievable. Problems arose in Portlaoise hospital, Cork University Hospital and Ennis General Hospital and a number of reports were issued by HIQA. Over a period there has been a series of misdiagnoses and tests that were not followed through and the right people did not look at the files, etc. Questions must be asked if the chief executive of Tallaght hospital told the Minister for Health and Children that there was a big problem with X-rays and she did not even inquire as to the extent of it or make an inquiry.
Dr. Muiris Houston, in his article in The Irish Times this morning, states: “If such a significant failure can occur in one of the State’s premier teaching hospitals and not be addressed for over four years, it may well have happened in other hospitals also.” One would imagine that if the Minister for Health and Children was told in December by the new chief executive of Tallaght hospital that there was a big problem with X-rays, she would have inquired into how many X-rays were involved, how big the problem was and what needed to be done about it. She did not make such inquiries or inquire into how her Department or the HSE could help to resolve it and she told us she only found out about the full scale of the problem yesterday. After all we have heard before, that is just incredible. I find it difficult to understand why it did not dawn on the Minister that, if there was a problem of the size in question in Tallaght, there might be a problem somewhere else, thus meriting an investigation across the health service into whether there were other X-rays that were not being examined.
There is in Tallaght hospital a medical problem and a human problem for those involved. It needs to be addressed urgently and I urge that this be done. There is also a political problem. We have had enough and this country has had enough of the mismanagement of the health service. Nothing is done about the things that go wrong in the health service when they are discovered; they are only addressed when they become public. We are not hearing about inquiries and investigations and what went wrong. It is the same pattern all the time; it is only when a problem enters the public domain and becomes a public issue that there is a big flurry of activity. When reshuffling his Cabinet, will the Taoiseach appoint a new Minister for Health and Children?
