HSE criticised over redacted meeting minutes at Oireachtas hearing on Tipperary hospital closure

The HSE is to be called before an Oireachtas Committee again following strong criticism of the heavily redacted minutes of meetings concerning the closure of Carrick-on-Suir’s St Brigid's Hospita thatl it sent to the watchdog.

And the Joint Oireachtas Committee on Petitions and the Ombudsmen has also decided to request Health Minister Stephen Donnelly to come before it to answer questions about the hospital’s controversial closure in 2020.

At the conclusion of an extensive hearing in February, the Joint Oireachtas Committee requested the HSE to submit to it the minutes of meetings where the decision to close the hospital was discussed along with any reports the decision was based on.

At the third committee hearing on July 13 in relation to Save St Brigid’s Action Group’s 11,000 name petition calling for the hospital’s re-opening, it emerged that the HSE submitted had minutes of meetings to the committee but they are unreadable as most of the content is blacked out.

Susan Mullins of the Save St Brigid’s Action Group, who made an updated submission to the Oireachtas Committee, said there was only one line left in the entire minutes the HSE handed over.

“It was offensive to everybody who sits on the committee,” she declared.

Committee Cathaoirleach Deputy Martin Browne from Cashel, said it was “an insult to us as a committee but a real kick in the teeth to the community”.

He added: “The HSE may as well have sent us an empty envelope for what it has sent us.”

The Sinn Féin TD estimated only 100 words were readable in the five pages the HSE submitted to the committee.

He hadn’t a problem with the HSE redacting a name but to redact whole sections of a meeting was different.

He said the Committee would bring the HSE back before it again.

And he agreed to fellow committee member Senator Gerard Craughwell’s request for the Minister for Health to come before the commitee either before or after the HSE.

Senator Craughwell was incensed at the extent of redaction in the minutes and said it displayed a “level of arrogance beyond belief” from the HSE.

“There are great big lumps of black on the pages.

“The only word I see on one page is ‘post’.

“That is very helpful.

“It is the most insulting document that has ever been published by anybody.”

Tipperary TDs Mattie McGrath and Jackie Cahill, who addressed the committee hearing, also condemned the heavily redacted minutes as “insulting”.

Deputy Cahill said the Committee couldn’t let the HSE away with giving that answer and pointed out that public representatives are entitled to know the background of how the closure decision was made.

Deputy McGrath said it was sad that people like t Save St Brigid’s Group representative Susan Mullins, come to Leinster House and have to deal with a “stone wall” from the HSE.

The extensive redaction of the contents of the meeting minutes was insulting to the intelligence of Oireachtas members and the people of Carrick-on-Suir, south Tipperary, south east Kilkenny and west Waterford, he declared.