Mary Harney

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Mary Harney : biography

11 March 1953 –

In March 2006, 16 months after she took office as health minister, the INO claimed that a record number of 455 people were waiting on hospital trolleys on one day (although the Health Service Executive gave a figure of 363 people waiting on hospital trolleys for the same day). In June 2006, the Health Consumer Powerhouse ranked the Irish health service as the second least "consumer-friendly" in the European Union and Switzerland, coming 25th out of 26 countries, ahead of Lithuania. However, in the same survey conducted a year later, the Irish health service showed significant improvement, coming 16th out of 29 countries. Ireland even scored higher than Britain’s NHS which came 17th in the survey.

In July 2006, Ireland on Sunday reported that Mary Harney’s mother, Mrs Sarah Harney, jumped a queue of two emergency cases to receive hip surgery at The Adelaide and Meath Hospital in Tallaght. The allegation was strongly denied by the minister. Sixty percent of respondents to an Irish Times/TNS mrbi poll in December 2006 said that the appointment of Harney to the position of Minister for Health had not led to any improvement in the health service. Fine Gael, the Labour Party and Harney’s own Progressive Democrats supporters were those who expressed most satisfaction with people in Dublin also feeling most dissatisfaction regionally. Harney rejected criticisms from Fine Gael during the same month that there had been a 25% increase in people waiting on trolleys in regional hospitals during the past two years; she claimed Health Service Executive statistics showed otherwise.

In July and August 2006, she issued three orders exempting two new community nursing units, to be built at St. Mary’s Hospital in the Phoenix Park, from the usual legally required planning permission, despite the Park being a designated and protected national monument. The Department of Health said the decision was made because of what it called the department’s "emergency response to the accident and emergency crisis at the time", although the nursing units, in use since 2008, are mainly for geriatric care.

The same year, in her capacity as Minister for Health, Mary Harney introduced risk equalisation into the Irish healthcare market. This was hugely resisted by BUPA. However, despite High Court proceedings, the controversial law was upheld. This forced BUPA out of the Irish healthcare market (BUPA Ireland was since bought by the Irish owned Quinn Group, averting any fear of redundancies). In January 2007, a leaked memo said that the planned Cancer Care Strategy, due for completion in 2011, would not be delivered on time. Harney denied this and said that since the leaking of the memo there had been much progress, although she did not elaborate. The plan was to allow for nationwide radiotherapy services by 2011.

Resignation as party leader

On 7 September 2006, Mary Harney announced that she was resigning as leader of the Progressive Democrats and that she would remain leader until a successor was chosen. She said she wanted to continue as Minister for Health but stated that it was a matter for her successor and the Taoiseach. She was succeeded by then Justice Minister Michael McDowell after Tom Parlon and backbencher Liz O’Donnell nominated him. Parlon became party president and O’Donnell Deputy Leader in an agreement with McDowell after much speculation that the pair would also seek the leadership.

2007 election aftermath

Following the poor performance of the Progressive Democrats at the 2007 general election in which the party lost 6 of its 8 seats, including that of party leader Michael McDowell, Harney resumed her role as party leader. The Progressive Democrats’ rules at the time stipulated that the leader of the party must be a TD, and since Harney was one of only two remaining TDs, she resumed the leadership in a caretaker capacity. Following a rule change that broadened the eligibility, she was succeeded by Senator Ciarán Cannon as party leader on 17 April 2008.