Time for Harney to go - Maurice Neligan

It's time we had a new health minister, according to well-known retired heart surgeon and media commentator Maurice Neligan.

In an interview with irishhealth.com, he says Mary Harney has failed, she has been pushing degrees of privatisation that have been "terribly harmful" and does not engage with and listen to the people providing health services.

"Leaving the party politics out of it, I would certainly welcome a new health minister. One who would engage and listen. There will be a change of Government eventually but I don't have any party preferences as regards Minister."

Maurice Neligan says he feels the health services have gone backwards during Mary Harney and Brendan Drumm's time in charge.

He says despite the much-vaunted reforms we are told are taking place in the hospital system, the facilities that were supposed to accompany the changes have not materialised.

"And they're certainly not going to materialise now because there's no money."

He is highly critical of the Minister's co-located hospital plan and says the fact that there are now 800 delayed discharge patients in hospital beds who have nowhere else to go is a "total indictment of the system."

On his fellow consultant Brendan Drumm, Maurice Neligan believes he has become a victim of "Stockholm Syndrome, where you begin to identify with your captors."

Read the full interview here

[Posted: Wed 23/09/2009]