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Angola erupts again
14 March 2010 By Niamh Connolly, Political Correspondent
On e word - ‘Angola’ - used by Taoiseach Brian Cowen to describe the health portfolio returned to haunt the government last week.
Cowen’s direct experience of the unexpected landmines that go with the job explains his robust defence in the Dáil of his health minister Mary Harney, who was ‘missing in action’ during last week’s Tallaght Hospital crisis.
Harney’s two-week St Patrick’s jaunt to New Zealand began before controversy exploded over 58,000 patient X-rays unreviewed over four years at a top teaching facility.
The affair will be another blot on her ministerial career.
Politics is all about public perception and timing. Even if medical negligence and poor governance lie at the heart of Tallaght Hospital’s dysfunctions, Harney fell on both counts in failing to take charge at a time of crisis.
Nobody can expect the health minister to ‘‘personally read X-rays at Tallaght’’, as several Fianna Fáil deputies indignantly repeated last week. But the general public might reasonably expect a cabinet minister to nominate one of the 15 junior government ministers to take her place for at least the first part of her two-week mission to New Zealand.
One health sector expert last week joked that New Zealand’s hospital services are not particularly cutting edge though its sheep farming was world-renowned.
Ireland does have trade links with New Zealand in the field of medical and orthopaedic devices valued at NZ$262 million a year, but this alone can hardly explain why she required a week more on her St Patrick’s trip than her cabinet colleagues.
Previous occasions when Harney combined personal ‘downtime’ with official state trips have caused controversy, from her attendance at the Super Bowl in Arizona on a ‘private day’ to other Fás trips of the past.
Harney is certainly accustomed to the perks of office.
She has been in cabinet for nearly 13 years and, before that, served as a junior minister between 1989 and 1992.
In the Tallaght controversy, ‘‘there were clinical governance malfunctions at fault here and, even if the politics are unfair on Harney, from the public’s perspective this has happened on her watch," said one former Fianna Fáil spin doctor.
‘‘It may be puerile politics, but it just doesn’t look good to be off in New Zealand at this time.
‘‘If she was wiser politically she’d have been back here to be seen to take decisive action," said the source.
Some ministers would respond to the public furore, not Harney.
As the former leader of a now defunct PD party who is unlikely to contest the next general election, Harney is not subject to constraints and, to some extent, the same level of electoral accountability as other ministers.
She enjoys special status as one of only two independent ministers ever to sit in cabinet, the first being James Dillon in a Fine Gael government 60 years ago.
Opinions on the peculiar position of Harney in cabinet are divided in Fianna Fáil, though last week’s events gave more ammunition to her critics, such as Tipperary South TD Mattie McGrath.
‘‘She should have returned home to deal with the crisis - Saint Patrick’s Day is not until Wednesday - and these questions over Tallaght Hospital are a mess and agonising for the families of those affected," said McGrath. He freely admits he is not a fan of Harney remaining in cabinet.
Harney will ‘‘need to ensure that heads roll and the issue isn’t buried," he added.
McGrath represents the irritation that some of the backbenchers have about Harney.
He describes her as having a good innings. ‘‘She doesn’t have a party now and she’s been in cabinet long enough. This shows a lack of judgment," he said.
But other TDs believe Harney’s semi-detached state has allowed her immunity from political lobbying to press ahead with policies that would have hamstrung ambitious Fianna Fáil ministers.
‘‘The expectation that she’s not going to be a candidate in the next election is a positive because she won’t succumb as easily as others to pressure from vested interest groups," said Fianna Fáil deputy Chris Andrews.
‘‘She doesn’t have an eye on the next election, whereas politicians hoping to get promoted beyond health would have more constraints. But perhaps she would need to clarify her intentions," Andrews said.
Harney’s policy to centralise cancer services at eight centres of excellence sparked major political lobbying by Fianna Fáil politicians against the move.
This led to a stand-off between Cowen and the two Sligo based Fianna Fáil politicians, Jimmy Devins and Eamon Scanlon, over services in the north-west.
Cowen sided with Harney on the matter but caused controversy at a political cost, with both Sligo politicians subsequently resigning the party whip and reducing the government’s narrow majority.
‘‘There is a strong sense that it would not have been politically possible for a Fianna Fáil politician to bring about those changes - reducing the number of hospital services and so on," said a political source.
While there are rumblings, Cowen’s robust defence of Harney in the Dáil last week has silenced many of the critics.
Having lost two cabinet ministers in the space of three weeks - Willie O’Dea and Martin Cullen - Cowen is hardly about to take a self-destructive step by dropping Harney.
She is now one of the key ministers with extensive political experience - despite her poor judgment of last week.
There are doubts that this battle-hardened politician would stay on the backbenches if demoted.
The more likely scenario is that, similar to Cullen, she would resign her seat, further weakening Cowen’s government in Dáil votes.
In any case, Cowen has enormous respect for Harney at a personal level. Asked directly by Labour leader Eamon Gilmore about his intentions, Cowen appeared to lay to rest suggestions of a demotion for her in a reshuffle.
He repeated his confidence in Harney who, he said, had brought ‘‘more changes for the reform of the health sector than any of her predecessors’’.
The former health minister, Micheál Martin, sat on the frontbench listening to this with some interest.
Fianna Fáil junior ministers who are hankering after Harney’s job were reminded of its pitfalls last week, one describing it as ‘‘a jack in the box of a ministry - anything can pop out at you’’.
The portfolio has haunted the careers of several politicians, including that of former Fine Gael leader Michael Noonan, who failed to recover from the Hepatitis C scandal in the mid-1990s.
Fianna Fáil TD for Laois Offaly Sean Fleming said he would prefer to see Harney rejoin Fianna Fáil rather than stay in cabinet as an independent.
‘‘It looks as if Harney will stay on in cabinet and Brian Cowen has expressed confidence in her," he said. ‘‘Tallaght is a voluntary hospital, it is not part of the HSE and it’s not Mary Harney’s job to read x-rays.
‘‘The person who was in charge of Tallaght when this was going on is the person responsible."
It remains unlikely that the public will see this controversy in such a tidy way, despite the government’s best efforts to protect the health minister from the fall-out, particularly since there are still major question marks about when she first learned of the problems.
Several Fianna Fáil backbenchers last week expressed their suspicions that Harney was the victim of a media heist in relation the timing of the release of the Tallaght report .
‘‘This is a stunt pulled to embarrass the minister," said Fleming.
‘‘Why wasn’t it released a few days ago before she went away? Blaming Mary Harney for this is like blaming Noel Dempsey, the minister for transport, for car crashes. It’s political manipulation."
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