ding dong the witch is dead...

sam34

Harney has resigned!!!!!


good riddance, tbh


see here

ok i cant get teh link to work but check it out on rte site

drkpower

Dont really want to defend Harney but compared against her recent 'peers' (ie.Cowen/Martin), she doesnt come out too badly. At least she freakin' tried, rather than being afraid to upset any local or vested interest.

Sunsh!ne

To be honest, I always thought Mary Harney got far more abuse then she deserved. Every little thing that went wrong with the health service while she was Minister for Health seemed to be her fault. If I do something wrong while I'm at work its my fault, I'm responsible. If its a case of the error occuring due to unsafe/incorrect work practices well then local management also has a role in looking at processes to stop the same thing happening again. Blaming Mary Harney for every unopened letter/unread Xray etc instead of the people responsible for managing and actually carrying out these roles seems a bit ridiculous in my opinion and seems to only happen in Ireland. Mind you, I'm not saying I'm a fan either, many of her decisions while Minister for Health were a complete and utter disaster.

Dr Galen

I was just singin that in my head before coming on here. Spoooooooooooooky Sam very spooky!

I actually with some of the above. She did come in for unfair criticism and blame. Unfortunately, to my mind the bad outweighs the good.

SleepDoc

Utterly wonderful news.

Spring has arrived early.

Vorsprung

In terms of her successor (medium term ie FG/Lab), does anyone know much about James O'Reilly or his Lab counterpart? While we thank our lucky stars that Harney is gone to a better place, have we got something to look forward to in her replacements?

amjon.

Vorsprung wrote: »

In terms of her successor (medium term ie FG/Lab), does anyone know much about James O'Reilly or his Lab counterpart? While we thank our lucky stars that Harney is gone to a better place, have we got something to look forward to in her replacements?

James O'Reilly is a doctor, maybe an ex-GP? If Labour get in via a coalition they will be more likey to get health than finance but no idea who they might slot in.

ergo

weird, that song got into my head when I heard the news too...

Harney was very effective at doing what she wanted to do
as I've posted here before I just happen to disagree with all of it :mad:

mainly pursuing the private (developer driven) agenda and making the Irish health system so unfair and unequal

imagine what could have been achieved with different policies promoting equality :rolleyes:
good riddance but the damage has been done and will take forever and a day to fix *sighs*

Vorsprung

amjon. wrote: »

James O'Reilly is a doctor, maybe an ex-GP? If Labour get in via a coalition they will be more likey to get health than finance but no idea who they might slot in.

Yea, he's a GP and still registered so he can practice, not sure if he still does though.

I'd have thought having cojones rather than being a doctor would be a better trait to be a good Health Minister. Then again I think the last doctor who did the job was Noel Browne, and he tried to shake things up too.


Just had a look at his website, here's a sample of a question he asked Harney lately:

To ask the Minister for Health and Children in view of the number of patients waiting on trolleys in accident and emergency, which reached an unprecedented high of 569 in January 2011, the precautions being taken to protect patients from cross infection from swine flu and other hospital infections; the additional capacity put in place to deal with the winter increase in hospital admissions; the way she will defend the closure of beds when demand is high; and if she will make a statement on the matter.
While the Minister has given us her answer, I must point out that in January 2007 the average number of people lying on trolleys was 243. It increased to 286 in January 2008, 346 in January 2009 and 387 in January 2010, and so far this month the average has been 464. Whatever plans the Minister has been putting in place have clearly not worked. Given that we know this increase in demand occurs every year during the winter and we end up with this crisis, surely to God there ought to be a plan to deal with this problem, with an additional ward available in the hospitals most at risk. Why has the Minister not, as I have suggested before, put out to tender to nursing homes for additional beds with associated occupational therapy, physiotherapy, and speech and language therapy? That would help to move out of our hospitals 500 patients who have finished the acute phase of their treatment.

Bolded by myself. Why indeed Minister Harney, why indeed...

drzhivago

Vorsprung wrote: »

In terms of her successor (medium term ie FG/Lab), does anyone know much about James O'Reilly or his Lab counterpart? While we thank our lucky stars that Harney is gone to a better place, have we got something to look forward to in her replacements?

Know him well and have had much experience with him over the years

would be very happy with him in role because he can see the implications to Mary Harney patients are numbers to be moved around the system, the question you highlighted in another post shows some depth of thinking and understanding that some of the elderly cannot be pushed out of hospitals in winter to any nursing home that is available

for a long time my feeling on health is that it is a transgovernment problem, by that I mean that any successful longterm changes are likely to take effect well after the life of one government and thus those making decisions will not see the benefit

example is the smoking ban, in 30 -40 years time we will have far less copd admissions for medical teams in winter but that is 30-40 years

FG want a universal health insurance system like holland, took 20 years+ to get bedded in there

will be significant upheaval here in short term so will take cojones to ride the waves here while it beds in

Vorsprung

Over in the Politics forum, and according to some people on Twitter, the Greens may be pulling out sooner rather than later (ie today). Might be seeing more of Dr Reilly soon. By the by I've just emailed him to see where FG's Fair Care site has gone to.

My only disappointment for this election is that I won't be at home to vote...

opinion guy

I read just now about Mary Harney's extensive retirement package - an approx 300,000 lump sum over 2 years and a 140000 pension annually:eek::eek::eek:

After holding back the vomit and taking a few minutes to process these figures I'm struck by the feeling of no....just no....this ain't right.

I'm forced to ask myself the following question - what legal responsibility does ex-Minister Harney hold for the consequences of her decisions in office.

I mean if my grandma broke her hip and her rehab was set back by lack of community physio as a result of government cutbacks for example and grandma suffered needlessly, can grandma or myself hire a solicitor and sue Harney for damages ? If my little Johnny needed surgery in Crumlin but theatres were closed due to cutbacks and little Johnny suffered longer than he should have can I sue ?


I'm only throwing out hypotheticals here. Thankfully, I'm not in a position where I have anyone so affected. It just seems well....wrong .... that someone who has demolished the health service walks away so handsomely rewarded.


Opinions everyone ?

drkpower

opinion guy wrote: »

I'm forced to ask myself the following question - what legal responsibility does ex-Minister Harney hold for the consequences of her decisions in office.

None, personally.

In addition, the State is generally not liable for the manner in which it distributes resources and the consequences of that distribution. There are some exceptions but it is quite complex.

There are obviously good reasons for the State (or a Minister personally) not being legally responsible for the effects of choices on how to distribute the national pie. Is the State liable for a road traffic accident on a windy tertiary road between Ballydehob & Ballybejaysus that would not have happened if a motorway were built between the two aforementioned towns?

opinion guy

drkpower wrote: »

None, personally.

In addition, the State is generally not liable for the manner in which it distributes resources and the consequences of that distribution. There are some exceptions but it is quite complex.

There are obviously good reasons for the State (or a Minister personally) not being legally responsible for the effects of choices on how to distribute the national pie. Is the State liable for a road traffic accident on a windy tertiary road between Ballydehob & Ballybejaysus that would not have happened if a motorway were built between the two aforementioned towns?

I see your point drkpower. But rta's are accidents. We're talking about policies here that compromise care.

drkpower

opinion guy wrote: »

I see your point drkpower. But rta's are accidents. We're talking about policies here that compromise care.

Any underfunding of the health service risks compromising patient care.
Any underfunding of the road network risks compromising safety on the roads.
Any underfunding of social welfare/child benefit risks compromising the future of children being raised by lone parents on SW.

...and so on and so on....

Difficult choices must be made in every area of government expenditure; making the State liable to individuals who lose out as result is untenable.

And none of the above should be taken as support for any Government's actions/inactions, particularly this one's, before anyone 'goes off on one'...!:D

sam34

i'm going to merge these threads, no need to have 2 active threads on mary harney

Sid_Justice

very unfair choice of thread title.

amjon.

Sid_Justice wrote: »

very unfair choice of thread title.

Life isn't fair.

opinion guy

Sid_Justice wrote: »

very unfair choice of thread title.

Apt username.

Biologic

Cheerio cheerio cheerio......