THE HEALTH Service Executive has played down the significance of a series of e-mails written by Prof Tom Keane in which the director of the State’s cancer control programme describes HSE bureaucracy as “intolerable”.
In January last year, shortly after his appointment, Prof Keane wrote to a Department of Health official in relation to his difficulties in dealing with the HSE when setting up the National Cancer Control Programme.
In the e-mails, published by health website www.irishhealth. com, Prof Keane said he felt he had no real support within the HSE and could not get agreement from the organisation on what responsibilities and resources would be transferred to the cancer control programme.
He said if information was not forthcoming: “I can only proceed directly to the Minister, as the situation is intolerable.”
Necessary financial information had not been released to him and he said: “It is strange to feel so exposed and visible without any real support within the HSE.”
A spokesman for the HSE yesterday said the e-mails were a “snapshot in time” and the issues raised by Prof Keane were now resolved.
“These e-mails date from January 2008 and things have come a long way since then,” the spokesman said.
“In recent days Prof Keane has himself pointed out the advances made . . . He seems, and is, very confident that everything is moving in the right direction,” he said.
Eight specialist cancer centres would be opening in late spring, he added.
