The President of the Irish Medical Organisation, Doctor Paula Gilvarry, has said she believes there are serious faults in the running of the Health Service Executive and in its relationship with the Department of Health.
She was speaking on RTÉ's This Week programme after it was revealed at an Oireachtas Committee hearing last Thursday that 97 women who underwent ultrasounds at the Midland Regional Hospital in Portlaoise were being recalled for surgical review.
The Minister for Health, Mary Harney, said she first heard about the rechecks at the Oireachtas Committee meeting.
Doctor Gilvarry said there was a major lack of communication between the HSE and the Department and that the system was snowed under with paper and bureaucracy.
She also said involvement by clinicians in decision making in the health service was not sufficient and that more communication was needed between clinicians and management.
Meanwhile, the National President of the Irish Countrywomen's Association has said that the Minister for Health must take immediate steps to roll out the breast check service throughout the rest of the country in the wake of the Portlaoise cancer scandal.
Speaking at a public meeting in Clonaslee in Co Laois this afternoon, Carmel Dawson said there were large areas of the west and the south that were still without coverage by breast check and that women in these areas needed to be reassured that the service would be available within days.
Ms Dawson also called on the government to provide free medical cards to the women affected by the misdiagnosis in Portlaoise.
She told a group of more than a hundred women at the public meeting that each of the women were now entitled to be given two free travel passes so as to allow them fulfil medical appointments.
