One of the two consultant surgeons suspended from Cavan General Hospital last year is to try and have his suspension overturned in the Supreme Court. Eithne Donnellan, Health Correspondent, reports.
The Irish Times has learned that Dr Pawan Rajpal lodged his Supreme Court appeal last week.
The move follows a High Court ruling last month that the decision by the North Eastern Health Board to suspend him in August 2003 was valid.
However, the court ruled that fair procedures were not adhered to by the health board's chief executive, Mr Paul Robinson, when seeking the establishment of a ministerial committee to inquire into matters leading to his suspension. Mr Justice Kearns held that Mr Robinson had also misconstrued his functions under the Health Act 1970.
He said there was not just a failure to comply with the Act, but "the clearest possible breach of constitutional and natural justice" to propose the removal of a senior surgeon from office before any finding of misconduct had been made against him.
A finding of misconduct must be made by a CEO before he could reasonably propose to remove a permanent officer of a health board. No such finding was made in the case, he said.
Instead of making findings which would have enabled him to determine the appropriate sanction, Mr Robinson had "passed the chalice onward" - to a committee - without making any findings himself, he added.
The High Court ruling is also being appealed by the North Eastern Health Board, which lodged its appeal papers last Thursday.
Dr Rajpal and another surgeon at Cavan Hospital, Dr William Joyce, were suspended over what were described as interpersonal difficulties. A ministerial inquiry into Dr Joyce's suspension is ongoing and is expected to conclude shortly.
Since their suspensions, controversy has surrounded the level of care being provided by the surgery department at Cavan hospital and local GPs have complained about an absence of continuity of care for patients, with locum consultant surgeons coming and going.
There were 15 adverse clinical incidents at the surgery department between September and December 2003 and a review of them found one of the principal causes was "inadequacies in the assessment and selection process for surgical interventions".
There was an absence of clear surgical leadership, it added.
Last week the health board published another report, this time into the death earlier this year of nine-year-old Frances Sheridan from Cootehill, three weeks after an appendix operation at the hospital. It referred to junior doctors in A&E having reservations about contacting the surgical team because they viewed them as unco-operative.
Mr Robinson admitted, when the report was published, that there were still difficulties at the surgery unit. "There is a difficulty still in and around the surgery department. It's an area we are moving to correct," he said.