The Government could take up to 10 years to decide what to do with the Hanly report on reforming the health services, a conference was told yesterday.
Speaking at the Association of Health Boards in Ireland annual conference in Tullamore, the secretary general of the Irish Hospital Consultants' Association, Mr Finbarr Fitzpatrick, expressed concern that the Government's National Health Strategy, the primary policy document underpinning the Prospectus, Hanly and Brennan reports, is "stagnating".
He was also particularly concerned about implementation of the Hanly report on hospital reform.
"We have been told by the Taoiseach and Minister for Health that it will take up to 10 years to implement the Hanly report. My worry is that it will take 10 years to decide what to do with the Hanly report," he said.
Mr Fitzpatrick said the last major report on restructuring the hospital services, the Fitzgerald report of 1968, was "followed by years of political wrangling and indecision".
"While some hospitals were closed, the majority of hospitals where closure had been recommended were left with a question mark over their future for two decades," he said.
Mr Fitzpatrick said the National Health Strategy was "stagnating". "I find it inexplicable that, while on the one hand Government recognises the consequences of our increasing and ageing population in so far as it concerns public pension policy to the year 2050, we seem to be unable to plan our health services with decisiveness even for 10 years ahead."
Mr Fitzpatrick also said the question of capacity in the hospital system had to be addressed. While average bed occupancy in France on any given day last year was 75 per cent, in Tullamore in 2001 it was 114 per cent, he said.
Councillors elected to the State's health boards expressed concern at the fact that local authority members will not be appointed to the boards following the local elections in June and claimed there would be a "democratic deficit" if the changes are pushed through. The Minister for Health has stated his preference that such appointments are not made in June, given the planned abolition of the health boards next January.
Councillor Jack Bourke, chairman of the Association of Health Boards and a member of the Midland Health Board, said his association had met the Minister for Health on January 26th. The Minister had "now agreed" there would be local authority representation "approximating what's there at the moment", but that its form had yet to be defined.
The association would continue its "unrelenting" campaign to ensure local democratic representation was retained, he said.
Mr Bourke also questioned whether the Hanly report could be implemented within the timeframe allotted. He said that much of what the author of the report had to say was good. However, a lot of it was "abject nonsense".
The 23rd conference, which speakers expected to be the association's last, given the planned abolition of the health boards, concludes today.