Rotunda’s interview panel ‘outrageously old-fashioned’ – Scally

The doctor who led the CervicalCheck inquiry has said the gender-imbalanced panel who picked the new master of Dublin’s Rotunda maternity hospital was an “outrageously old-fashioned and antiquated approach”.

Dr Gabriel Scally, who criticised a culture of paternalism that left 221 women in the dark about smear test audits in his report on the CervicalCheck controversy, said nine men on an interview panel of 13 was a "sloppy" and "outmoded, ineffective and deficient way of doing things".

Just four women, including the female non-voting HR director of the Rotunda, sat on the panel to choose the next master of the oldest maternity hospital in the world, which has not had a female master in its 277-year history.

He said it was reminiscent of a paternalistic culture “that the oldest maternity hospital in the world has never had a woman leader and that an important appointments panel should be so unbalanced in terms of gender” .

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The selection of obstetrician Prof Seán Daly as the new master, effectively the Rotunda’s chief executive, drew public expressions of disappointment from two unsuccessful female candidates.

Dr Scally said one recommendation in his CervicalCheck report was that women’s health should be put “very firmly centre stage” in Irish health service and that meant making sure women were involved in decision-making about healthcare and women’s healthcare.

“That means an adequate involvement in appointment panels,” he said.

He added that equality in healthcare “has to go from top to bottom and bottom to top; it is very difficult to argue for equality if it is not demonstrated at the highest level”.

Regulated

A spokesman for the Rotunda said its recruitment was subject to public service legislation and was regulated by the Commission for Public Service Appointments, and all appointments were subject to the commission’s guidance on gender balance and interview panels.

He said the process for selecting and recruiting the master was also governed by the Rotunda’s constitution, which is a “royal charter” that sets preconditions and eligibility for the role.

Dr Eddie Morris, president of the Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists (RCOG), was one of the nine men on the interview panel. A spokeswoman for the RCOG said Dr Morris was invited to join it but that it could not comment on another organisation's recruitment process.

“The RCOG would always strive to have gender-balanced interview panels but we appreciate it is not always practical or possible to achieve this,” the spokeswoman said.

The Royal College of Surgeons in Ireland said it was represented on the interview panel in its capacity as an academic partner of the Rotunda and provided the room for the interviews.

It offered no response to queries on the gender balance of the panel.

The medical school has prided itself in recent years on winning awards under the Athena Swan Charter that is used to drive gender equality in higher education and research.