The Health Service Executive (HSE) will begin consultation next year with health professionals and local communities on the reorganisation of hospitals along the lines set down in the controversial Hanly report.
Confirmation of the move came yesterday from the director of the new National Hospitals Office of the HSE, Pat McLoughlin. Speaking at a Joint Oireachtas Committee on Health and Children, he said the Minister for Health Mary Harney had asked his office to take the Hanly report on board.
The report, which was published in 2003, has led to protests across the State over its recommendation that A&E units at smaller hospitals be replaced with nurse-led, minor-injury units.
Kevin Kelly, interim chief executive of the HSE, told the committee he had read the Hanly report a number of times, and now believed the communication of its message had left a lot to be desired.
At the heart of it, he said, was a pledge that nothing could change without certain steps being taken. These included improvements to the ambulance service. However, there were "glaring gaps" in paramedical services.
He said the Hanly programme was a 10-year one.
Mr McLoughlin said his office would be looking at national ambulance response times as a first step.
He added that the principles of Hanly were already being put in place. "We are sticking to the principles of Hanly . . . but investment must follow that."
They were responding to queries about the report from Fine Gael senator Fergal Browne, who suggested Hanly had been "binned" and "ignored".
The Hanly report dealt with the reconfiguration of hospital services in just two regions, and a group was put in place following its publication to draw
up another report on how hospitals in other
regions should be reorganised using Hanly as a blueprint.
However, the so-called Hanly II group never met as a result of it being boycotted by hospital consultants concerned about the introduction of a new insurance scheme. It was disbanded this year.
Meanwhile, the committee was told that agency nurses, now widely used because of 700-plus nursing vacancies in the State, cost 90 per cent more than staff nurses.
Diarmuid Collins, national director of finance with the HSE, said they were at times employed to circumvent the employment control ceiling put in place to save money. "It can lead to value for money going the wrong way."
The committee also heard the HSE has now drawn up its capital spending plan for the year.