Can one politician really cure the ills of our health service?

If Margaret Thatcher deserves the title 'The Iron Lady', Mary Harney should probably be known as 'The Titanium Lady'. With all the horror stories emerging from our hospital emergency departments this past week, the latter would, in all likelihood, need a coat made from such tough metal to survive the slings and arrows being slung in her direction by an angry public. Not only is there much justified public indignation at the fact that sick, vulnerable people are being humiliated simply because they had the audacity to get sick, but our Health Minister seems to have vanished. Can you really blame her for keeping a low profile at this time? There is no doubt that someone is to blame for the shocking and appalling images that we have been treated to recently in emergency departments the length and breadth of the country. But is it any more realistic to blame one person for all that ails us than it is to expect any one person to cure all that ails us? The problems in our health service – if it can even be called such - are about as straightforward as the Riemann Hypothesis; therefore, it is pathetically and overly simplistic to blame just one person. Many may not agree with that viewpoint, arguing that, as Minister for Health, the buck stops with Mary Harney. End of discussion. And perhaps they are right. Many of you will have far more experience of, and insight to, the workings of the health service than I. I do not work in, nor have I studied at length, all publications relating to our health sector. But, like everyone else, I would be horrified at the prospect of any of my family or friends having to use this service in its present form and be forced to wait, undignified and in pain, on a hospital trolley in some corridor with no privacy. We are all mad as hell with the health service, infuriated with the banking sector, incensed about risking our lives every time we travel on our untreated roads. And we want to vent this anger. And we have the right to vent this anger. So woes betide the next politician that happens our way. But Ms Harney does not run the HSE – she merely assigns someone to this post, informs them of their budget and sends them on their merry way. The chosen one has autonomy in deciding how to spend said budget. Last July, the then head of the HSE, Prof Brendan Drumm, insisted that Ireland had too many hospital beds and that, in addition to the 1,000 beds that had recently been taken out of the system, 1,100 more beds needed to be closed - Prof Drumm's assertion…not Mary Harney's. People may well argue that Minister Harney should simply relieve of their post any head of the HSE who closes beds or makes any other unpopular decisions. However, this is where it becomes apparent that the HSE, like all other quangos in Ireland, has morphed into a creature similar to that created by Dr Frankenstein (remember, in Mary Shelley's book, Frankenstein is the doctor who creates the monster - not the monster itself). Just like Frankenstein, the Irish government probably felt that the creation of quangos would greatly benefit society. At first, all seems well, until one horrific day this creation gets a little bit disenchanted that all its desires are not being met – in the monster's case, his emotional needs are not being satisfied; in the quangos case, their insatiable need for money is not being fulfilled. Frankenstein declares that he cannot possibly love such a hideous creature; similarly, the government turns out its empty pockets and states that the HSE will just have to stop wasting money on wasters and start looking after patients and frontline staff. Incensed, these creatures throw a wobbler and plan the destruction of their erstwhile masters. The monster uses his unnatural strength and size to wreak havoc on Frankenstein and all his loved ones; the quangos use the unnatural Irish legal system as their weapon of choice. Either way, the result is the same – broken bodies, blood and entrails as far as the eye can see. Another weapon the HSE has in its arsenal is the vision of sick, even dying, patients on trolleys lining hospital corridors. Now, they have managed to enlist more recruits to their cause – the public. By now, the end is nigh for our Minister for Health. But will the next brave soul be any better equipped to slay the monster that is the Irish quango?