Sunday Paper Review June 14th
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What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
The Pat Kenny Show. With Timber Living Log Cabins. Saturday and Sunday from 10am. On Newstalk. Conversation that counts.
taking a good look at all of the news, reviews, opinions and comment in the Sunday papers. And I'm delighted to be joined by my panel this morning. Louise O'Reilly, Sinn Féin TD for Dublin Fingal West. Paul Hosford, Deputy Political Editor with the Irish Examiner. And Pat Rabbit, former Labour Party leader. You're all very welcome to the studio on this Sunday morning.
What are the main stories covered in the Sunday papers?
I'm going to start with you, Paul, because if we thought that the... Board of the Rotunda or the leadership within the Rotunda capitulating to the Minister was going to draw a line under this issue about public-private maternity care and the battle with the Minister here over the implementation of these public-only contracts for consultants. We were wrong. It's continuing.
Yeah, and it's continuing in a vein, I suppose, that you've seen all week where the minister is almost not necessarily spoiling for a fight, but certainly isn't backing down. The Sunday Times, Jennifer Bray has an interview with Jennifer Cara McNeil. She also has a piece about it. An internal HSE report that suggests that of 2,837 consultants who have logged their four-week work plan, only 37% say that they'll work in the evenings. Only 11% will say that they'll work on Saturdays and that the minister has laid down a four-week deadline for this to be rectified. It goes on then, there's a longer interview, excuse me, further into the paper where she says that she had told the Rotunda to end its private maternity care twice and that she had been defiled.
As far back as last summer.
Yeah, and I suppose this is, I suppose, the crux of her, I suppose, her frustration with the Rotunda seems to have been that she had flagged this issue a number of times and that it hadn't been dealt with up until it became, I suppose, a real issue in the last couple of weeks. I think it's, I mean, you go through the papers, Shane Coleman has a piece in the Business Post about her leadership style or her leadership approach. You've got a piece in the Sunday Independent about kind of where next for this ambitious minister. So Jennifer Carol MacNeill generally on the media and coming out fairly well from this. And I think Look, I think there's a couple of issues there in terms of how this is discussed.
And I think one of them that hasn't really been broached is, look, consultant doctors are not a sympathetic class. They earn a lot of money. And when people go into hospital, their frustration is often that they don't see the consultant enough or they see nurses more than they see consultants enough. So their perception of their care is often more primary. It's more about who is there often. But I do think that this whole thing risks denigrating the really good work that's done by consultant doctors in our hospitals. Incredibly capable, incredibly intelligent people who work really, really hard. And I think to kind of write them off as either greedy or lazy is, It doesn't tell the full story. If you've ever been in a hospital, they are incredibly hardworking people, nearly across the board.
And I think that there's just a risk that this becomes about minister versus a protected class. And that protected class, because they earn a lot of money, and look, they absolutely do, that they don't elicit the same sympathy as they would if they were nurses or non-consultant hospital doctors.
Now, she does say within that piece, within that interview with Jennifer Bray, that she's sort of putting the responsibility back over to the clinical directors within the hospital, the people who put forward the rosters or agree the rosters.
What issues are arising with public-private maternity care?
She said, I'm asking you to go back and look at these rosters again and change these rosters. So is that where she's shifting the blame? Not necessarily saying the consultants don't want to work the weekends. Is she saying the clinical directors within the hospital don't want to have that battle or just haven't got the mindset yet?
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Chapters
6 chapters
1
What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
0:01–0:36
2
What are the main stories covered in the Sunday papers?
0:36–4:00
3
What issues are arising with public-private maternity care?
4:00–12:54
4
How does the Minister's leadership style affect public health?
12:54–15:38
5
What challenges do consultants face in Irish hospitals?
15:38–23:39
6
Why is the public's perception of hospital care important?
23:39–36:24