HSE MODEL HAS NOT WORKED, IT'S TIME FOR GREATER ACCOUNTABILITY - KENNY

Posted on February 19, 2014 5:16 PM   |   Permanent Link   

Speaking on the Health Service Executive (Financial Matters) Bill 2013

Under the Health Act 2004 the Health Service Executive has its own Vote - in other words, it is funded through a separate process from the Department of Health. The Programme for Government contains wide ranging commitments regarding reform of the Health Services and the dissolution of the HSE is also a necessary step in the process of implementing these.

"The Health Act 2004 provided that the Minister for Health had no legal role in setting the HSE budget. The intention then was to give the HSE greater operational autonomy from what at the time was characterised as a politicised decision-making system. However it is clear that in the years since this was done, that the Health Service has been weakened because the accountability of the HSE to the Minister for Health and the Department of Health was sorely lacking.
This Bill seeks to rectify that situation by restoring the Vote of the HSE to the Office of the Minister for Health and thus re-establishing appropriate and proper accountability for the HSE to the Government. It is another step on the reform journey, including the dissolution of the HSE, the establishment of a Health Commissioning Agency, new community care structures and the establishment of Hospital Trusts."

"The Bill provides for the disestablishment of the Vote of the Health Service Executive from January 2015 and from that date the funding of the Executive will be mainly through the Vote of the Office of the Minister for Health by way of grants paid to the Executive. The Executive will itself continue to collect the income it generates through statutory charges, superannuation contributions and other miscellaneous income."

"The Director-General of the HSE will become an accountable person rather than an Accounting Officer and the Bill sets out an alternative statutory framework to govern the funding of the HSE and ensure that proper controls, in relation to its expenditure, are exercised by the Director-General. The Bill also makes consequential changes to the Service Plan process to align it with the new budgetary arrangements."

"The central aim of the Health Reform Programme is to improve equity and access to services. This Bill is an essential part of that goal. Transparency and accountability around service delivery are fundamental to the health reform programme. I believe that this Bill, together with the other changes that are being made, will help ensure more accountability during the time the HSE continues in existence."

"I welcome this Bill. It will, I hope, bring a strong element of control to the overly bureaucratic nature that is the HSE, which has removed accountability from the provision of health services and has taken accountability away from political authority, and though that from the people of the country."

"Before I was elected to this house in 2011 I was a local authority member of the Dublin North East Regional Forum, which itself was a replacement for the Health Boards. The Regional Forum was purely consultative in nature and had no decision making function, and I would seriously question its effectiveness."

"I want to pay tribute to the individual staff members of the HSE, who have worked very hard - but the reality is that the model of the HSE has not worked - the last decade has shown that. It is too large and too unwieldy to function in a cohesive and consistent manner. It is time to move on and take a new approach - this Government is doing just that."