The Workers’ Party have said that Health Minister Mary Harney is now a central cause of the ongoing crisis within the health service and that every day that she remains in office exacerbates that crisis.

Louth Workers’ Party representative Peter Short said the health service would be better with no minister in place than with Ms. Harney ruling, but not managing her department.  He called on the Taoiseach to immediately relieve Ms. Harney of office.

Mr. Short said the revelation that more than 6,000 X-rays needed to be reviewed in the North East region is merely the latest in a long line of mistakes, misdiagnoses and misadventure in the Region,  stretching back to the Neary case. 

“We do not have a health service in the North East Region”, said Mr. Short, “we have a conveyor belt with nobody overseeing it.  Meanwhile patients in the region live in fear”.

Mr. Short said that the recruitment embargo in the health service was a sick and cynical joke from the government.  “In a country that has more quangos and boards than it knows what to do with, the idea that we cannot replace an essential worker in the health service just to satisfy some number cruncher in the Department of Finance is a disgusting example of bureaucracy gone mad.  It is time that someone was held to account and in this regard the buck must stop with the Minister who has turned a health crisis into an absolute disaster”, said the Workers’ Party spokesman.