The news that Prof Drumm was being paid a €70,000 bonus in recognition of work done in 2007 upset Cathy McGrath so much that she wrote to this newspaper, writes LORNA SIGGINS
CATHY McGRATH has written many letters since her son, Matthew, became very ill at 17 months old. He was hospitalised with meningitis and contracted a brainstem infarction which left him paralysed from the neck down, and permanently dependent on a ventilator to breathe.
Now six years old, Matthew is attending school and is living, in his mother’s words, “ a compromised, yet happy and fulfilled life with his family” near Gorey in Co Wexford.
The situation may be challenging for his parents, but it is a comfortable one for Matthew. However, there is no sense of permanence to it, and the 24-hour care has not developed overnight. Thus, it was with a particular sense of frustration and anger that Cathy McGrath wrote another letter last week – this time to this newspaper.
She had read Martin Wall’s report of October 14th about the €70,000 bonus for HSE chief executive Prof Brendan Drumm, even as the HSE planned €1.2 billion in cuts.
One section of the report jumped out at her – that the bonus was in recognition for work done in 2007 when “activity in many community and hospital services increased”.
As she told The Irish Times at the weekend, this sounded “so surreal” that she felt physically sick on reading it. “We had an enormous battle to get Matthew home from hospital, in spite of this ‘commitment’ to community healthcare,” she says. “We had to fight the HSE every inch of the way.”
When Matthew was diagnosed with the brainstem infarction, the situation seemed very bleak – “but he was alive”, she recalls. He had been a perfect child before that – a happy toddler.
He was transferred from their local hospital to Our Lady’s Hospital for Sick Children in Crumlin, Dublin. “He was there on a ventilator in the intensive care unit for two years,” she says. “He had wonderful treatment, but every family wants their child to come home. The hospital medical staff were very supportive of us in this. However, the HSE officials had a very different approach,” she says.
“I couldn’t understand this at first. It costs €1,600 a day to keep a child in ICU, and far less to keep them at home, but you can’t just walk out when your child needs high-level care,” she says. “So we had to shout and scream, and then beg. I never felt supported by these officials. They would reduce you to a mad frenzy, their attitude being that you would get tired and leave them alone. When you begged, which was humiliating, you might get part of what you wanted.”
Agency nursing is now provided at home, but it is on a freelance basis with no contracts provided to nurses to cover days that Matthew might be in hospital. “I felt that this wasn’t right – it wasn’t fair to the nurses, and to the agency which has been terrific,” she says.
“So I objected to this and I finally got a letter from Minister of Health Mary Harney’s office to say that the nurses should be paid while he was in hospital. I showed it to an official from the HSE who said it wasn’t acceptable.
“Matthew’s brain was and is perfect,” she says. “We had been told he would never talk, but he now chats away and he is learning to read in school. He cannot move or exercise his muscles, and he is at risk of chest infections when on a ventilator.
“There is no comprehensive community-based physiotherapist in our area, however, due to funds, and he might see a community physio three times a year.”
Prof Drumm’s bonus could easily cover such a service, she believes, but she is also angry at what she perceives to be an “arrogance which runs right through the HSE among certain people in positions of power”.
“Of course, there are fine people, but they get moved aside or ignored. When we were trying to set up a support system at home for Matthew, it was very stressful. We bought a generator ourselves, as we couldn’t risk a power cut.”
In various meetings with the HSE, she never met the same manager more than twice, and has counted three different people so far in the post of assistant director of public health nursing. “The lack of continuity and consistency is appalling,” she says.
“I’ve never received a phone call from the HSE just asking me how I am coping and how I am getting on. We have been called into meetings – yes – but the main aim seems to be how they can reduce costs.
“You get the feeling that they are delighted when Matthew is ill enough to go back into hospital, so they can save on agency nursing fees – even though it is more expensive to keep him in a ward. And there’s a feeling that at any point they will cut back on what they are providing now.”
She drives Matthew up to Crumlin fairly regularly as he has to have blood tests. “I pack the car as if I’m going off on a world trip! As I said, the hospital staff are marvellous, but I am totally stressed by the time I walk in the door because of the battle to get a parking space.”
As she noted in her letter, it has “got to the stage now where, each time we approach the hospital, a little voice from the back of the car intones, ‘Mommy, I’m praying to Holy God that we get a parking place’. And this from a boy who is about to undergo a painful medical procedure.”
“We hear now about the cutbacks in Crumlin. I am sure Prof Drumm’s bonuses for the past few years could pay the salary of two nurses a year? I don’t believe Minister for Health Mary Harney is powerless to act,” she says. “And I know of lots of other parents who have had, or are having, the same experience as us.”
Ms McGrath recalls that the response she received from Department of Education officials to her inquiries about Matthew’s education was in marked contrast to that of the HSE.
“You had the feeling they wanted to help if they could. So now he goes to Enable Ireland’s school in Bray, Co Wicklow, with his nurse three times a week, and he goes two days a week with his nurse to the local school. He loves it. And that’s the way that it should be.”
