In view of the fact that we have moved into Private Members' time and because I know there is some anxiety on the part of other Deputies to contribute, I will try to truncate what I have to say.
This Bill is nothing more than popular stuff. It is part of the coin of the political currency which the Progressive Democrats, the sponsoring party, are guilty of circulating. It is opportunistic. The Bill is meaningful in itself and the principle which it seeks to establish is a good one, but they have taken a good principle, incorporated it in a meaningless, illogical and wasteful Bill and then presented it before this House as if it were some great mould-breaking stumble forward. The reality is that it is nothing more nor less than a crass, cheap, shallow political stunt aimed at the flagging fortunes of that party. However, there will be another day for judging that issue.
There are a number of dangerous points about this Bill. The principle that somehow we should extend the concept of an ombudsman to have an administrative overview on the health service is one that I personally support, but it would be very dangerous if we were to go the route that this Bill proposes. The creation of an additional ombudsman would create an aditional call on the funds available for the existing Ombudsman's office. Undoubtedly some of the scarce resources that are at present available to the Ombudsman would have to be diverted into the new office which would create a parallel administrative structure to the current Ombudsman. Deputies should look at the report of the Ombudsman since the extension of his remit to cover health services. There is very little evidence that this proposal is now necessary nor is there any evidence to suggest that the pressures which undoubtedly exist on that office primarily arise from the fact that the Ombudsman is now charged with overseeing the activities of the health boards.
The most odious aspect of the Bill is the divisiveness that it would create. If one reads subsections 3 (1) and (3) together, one can only come to the conclusion that there is to be an extraordinary type of discrimination introduced whereby private patients who do not have VHI cover would find themselves, in some circumstances, without the right of access to the Ombudsman, the common person's complaint agent. That surely is a ludicrous proposal. Perhaps I misunderstand the Bill, but I am convinced that is the main thrust if one reads those two subsections together. I do not think the Bill's proposals are intended to create that odious situation; but that slovenly drafting in a Bill which has quite a few pieces of slovenly drafting simply illustrates the basic thesis I first proposed, that the Bill is nothing more than populist, opportunistic stuff, not seriously aimed at creating an improvement in the health services.
Another point about the Bill which is an annoyance, and I know there are other people more eloquent than I am on this issue on the opposite benches, is its slavish adherence to the British model. When the British were adopting the Ombudsman system they decided that they would incrementally approach it; they were fearful of this new concept. They, I suppose, had some reason to be fearful. In the English speaking world the Ombudsman concept was new in the sixties when they first started to put their legislation into place. It is no longer new. There are over 80 ombudsman offices in operation in common law countries around the world; they are well tried and tested and only one country, the UK, has come up with this nonsensical suggestion of creating parallel ombudsmen for different areas of public administration in its widest sense.
What we have in this Bill is an example of this slave mentality that so often exists in our law, the slavish adherence to the British model. What is particularly worthy of condemnation is that the model the drafters of this legislation are slavishly adhering to is a failed model, because anything that is written on the British health ombudsman comes to the inevitable conclusion that that separated office is a failed office. That someone should suggest that this is another great stumble forward for the mode breakers of Irish politics stretches credulity. The facts are that if we wish to extend the Ombudsman's power to clinical judgment issues, we should do so by amending the primary Ombudsman legislation and then by concentrating such resources as we can give to our ombudsman/ ombudspersons to the one office and concentrate them there — I introduce the concept of ombudspersons as Deputy Barnes has joined us.
This is not serious legislation, although hidden deep in the murk of the Bill there is a serious concept, the question of how we create a situation where people who feel they have a grievance against the medical services, against the clinical end of the health administration, will be able to seek support from some public agency in the vindication of their rights, in the pursuit of justice. In my own constituency the need for some institutional arrangement in this regard is very well illustrated by Willie Dunne's family tragedy. The fact that a young couple, having suffered the long drama of the dispute, now have to put their house on the market is a tragedy, and we in this House should come up with some serious proposals for addressing that sort of issue; this is not a serious proposal. In the core of the Bill there is a little gem, it is surrounded by a great deal of murk and mire, including not least the intentions of the people who introduced the Bill to use a circumstance for which there is a great deal of public sympathy to trump up a bit of political support. The Bill is riddled with weaknesses. The least one can say about some of the provisions is that they are slovenly. The fact is they are unworkable, divisive, uneconomical in their concept and they would certainly be uneconomical if it were sought to put them into effect. The major provisions in section 3 are really, if the House will excuse the unparliamentary language, no more tarted up versions of what one would find in the Ombudsman Act, 1980. If we want to improve that Act we should do as the New Zealanders did some years after they brought the primary ombudsman legislation into operation; they reconstituted the parliamentary committee, looked at the office and its weaknesses; and political consensus was reached on where the major weaknesses were and how they could be addressed. That is how the New Zealanders went on to create a model ombudsman. One will not create a model anything by simply attempting to use a sad case or occasional sad cases to political advantage.
The provisions of section 4 of the Bill strike me as being particularly undesirable. I agree with what Deputy Yates said last night about laypersons trying to double guess medical opinion and the undesirability of that. Section 4 provides that the Ombudsman shall have the power to direct a hospital or health board to provide specified medical or surgical services to a named eligible person. I may be misreading this, but surely this is most undesirable. Would this not create an institutionalised queue jumping arrangement, because after all not everybody in the queue for health services will take their case to the Ombudsman? Occasionally it will be found that some individuals are not treated particularly well, but unless one could have some way, the wisdom of Solomon, to oversee the entire queue for a particular service and to be able to judge between the degrees of misery which every person in that queue is suffering then this is surely institutionalising injustice, and there cannot seriously be the intention to do this. For example, I do not believe Deputy Walsh, who is going to speak on this next, would wish to see that happen. That would have the effect of putting into operation the proposals which I presume the Deputy is going to speak in favour of later tonight.
The facts are that this is ill-advised legislation. The idea of creating an easily accessible, inexpensive system of ensuring justice for people who feel they have suffered an injustice with regard to the health service is an important idea which we should look at seriously. My passionate belief is that the only way one can achieve that type of justice is by having a serious look at the existing office of the Ombudsman and considering how we can extend the Ombudsman's remit to cover the issue.
This Bill would not in any way improve the general wellbeing of people. It would cause a great deal of expense and duplication and would undoubtedly create a degree of confusion. If one looks at the cases that go through the health services, one can see that there are administrative elements and clinical elements. Are we to take the administrative end of the complaint to the Ombudsman in St. Stephen's Green and take the clinical element to another Ombudsman operating somewhere else? That would not make sense. After all, the party who sponsored this Bill argue that they came into politics to give sense and realism particularly in economic matters. That is hardly realistic and it is not sensible. Although the principles at the centre of the Bill are well worth considering the Bill has nothing whatsoever to commend it.
