31st August 2000
I should have sent my CV to the European Investment Bank? I have never worked in banking, which is obviously an asset, and I might even be able to prevent the Bank of Ireland from admitting that I have been a compliant customer for decades. £147,000 as opposed to £22,000 in Seanad Éireann is enticing but I'd never go just for the money, I would need to be sure I was wanted for the job.
This is what puzzled me about Mr. Hugh O'Flaherty. With 83% of the public in one vox pop saying he shouldn't take the job, or even have been offered it, and his field being the law, can it really be that the money was all that made him determined to go to Luxembourg?
Now I don't know the former judge. I did meet him once at a large garden party but I thought he was another judge so I doubt if that makes us even acquaintances. I believe he is very able and will surely be offered a considerable amount of suitable work in his field nationally and internationally.
Those who have said his resignation should not have been sought by the Government (and given eventually) and that a "second chance" was deserved do not seem to follow what has upset the 83% who opposed the appointment. These people feel that there are certain persons in Ireland who can get on the inside track in all walks of life, even in the courts. This is why former Chief Justice Hamilton said the law had been brought into disrepute by the Sheedy saga and the two judges and the court official had to go.
The inmates of Mountjoy Prison come mainly from seven Dublin postal districts. Dublin 4, where the former judge lives, is not one of them. The prisoners know that a friend of theirs will never just happen to bump into a judge out walking his dog and have the process of their cases altered. No matter how humanitarian the action it showed that the privileged helped the privileged. Indeed the judge may have helped other people but from his television and radio interviews I am still not sure whether he had or had not interfered in other cases, so I won't go into that.
There is a new development in the method of referral of public patients to our stressed out hospital service and I think we need to be careful in case we are accused of producing an inside track of our own in medicine.
In the past, if I wanted to refer a patient to another consultant I would phone the GP concerned and we would agree on the consultant I would approach. My secretary would then phone the hospital involved, an appointment would be made, I would write a referral letter and off the patient would go. Eventually I would hear from the other consultant.
Over the last few years, because of the dreadful waiting lists, things have changed. When my secretary phones the hospital she is told I must send a personal letter to the consultant who will then assess the situation and say when the patient can have an appointment. This, I am sure, has arisen to try to get the most urgent patients seen first. Good hearted as this may be there is a certain lack of transparency and patients could be forgiven for thinking some may get preferment because the referring doctor knows the "buzz" words, or whatever. Some may feel that because of an inadequate referral letter they are left on the back burner.
Does the Minister for Health and Children know that this is the way consultants are trying to ensure the most urgent cases are seen first? I don't remember a clause in the common contract which said one of the duties and responsibilities of consultants was to try to prioritise their outpatient appointments from personal letters which give inadequate information.
When waiting list times are quoted it is usually the time a patient is kept waiting for a needed operation or procedure. But the waiting time before a patient even gets a first outpatient appointment can be even longer and more harmful to the eventual prognosis. As well, additional stress is put on the consultants involved who have to prioritise patients with, perhaps, insufficient facts to be sure they are doing so correctly. Is it really right to continue this system?
With 40% of the population now in private insurance schemes waiting lists have developed for private patients, too. Indeed, within the last few weeks when I tried to get appointments for patients in three different disciplines I was told the consultants involved were taking on no more new patients until they had worked through their waiting lists! So much for private patients getting faster and better treatment!
Senator Mary Henry, MD
