Bureaucracy, responsibility and confusion

Some years ago I had occasion to make a complaint to the then Southern Health Board regarding the abuse of a patient by hospital staff. I remember being angry when my letters were completely ignored and subsequently experiencing total confusion on the phone in my attempts to track down the person responsible for dealing with such complaints.

I can therefore, to a degree, sympathise with Minister for Community, Rural and Gaeltacht Affairs, Eamon Ó Cuív who has admitted that he cannot make head nor tail of the Health Service Executive (HSE).

Speaking on Drivetime (3rd Oct.), the Minister was clearly frustrated at the level of impenatratable bureaucracy in the HSE. He spoke about giving millions to the HSE and now he can’t even get an invoice from them.

I say sympathise to a degree with the minister because, of course, he and his colleagues are fully responsible for creating the rampant bureaucratic monster that the HSE has become.

When it became obvious that politicians had neither the courage nor ability to resolve the chronic mess they had made of the ‘health service’ they simply abdicated all responsibility by creating an ‘independent’ HSE.

Minister like O’Cuiv and Harney are now lining up to complain about this incompetent bureaucratic monster as if they had nothing to do with its creation and have no responsibility in bringing it to heel.

This matter and some other political shenanigans are cogently analysed in today’s Irish Examiner.