Page 4417 - Week 15 - Tuesday, 19 November 1991
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The committee, for example, was gravely concerned about the fact that the Minister made a great show, in the early period of the Government, of being prepared to make available to members of the Assembly monthly reports on progress in the hospital budget and suddenly - indeed, while the Estimates Committee was sitting - decided that there ought not to be a continuation of this practice. That, Mr Speaker, is symptomatic of the whole process we saw coming from the Minister for Health, which was that it is better to say nothing and not be found out than to say something and risk being hauled up later on for misleading or saying something inaccurate. I have to say, Mr Speaker, that that attitude leaves the Assembly and its processes very much in the dark - a very sad and regrettable state of affairs, given the serious problems health has faced in the last few years.
Mr Berry is on the record as saying a number of things in the area of health which it appears were not sustained when he appeared before the Estimates Committee. In particular, I think members will clearly recall Mr Berry saying many times that the previous Government, the Alliance Government, had done nothing about financial management problems in the Department of Health. That was not a single statement; that was a statement repeated over a number of months, particularly during the period when we were in government. I have press statements which have him repeating those very words. I will not quote them, though.
I therefore set out to ask Mr Berry's officials in the Estimates Committee just what had been done in the course of this financial year to remedy problems in the financial management systems of the hospitals. I asked Mr Woods, who appeared for the Health Department, a number of questions about that. I asked whether he could detail the upgrading of financial management systems since April 1991.
For the benefit of the committee he went through a very long list of all the very extensive changes being made by the department at that time, including the appointment of a chief finance officer, steps towards appointment of a chief executive, the establishment of Fiscal as the basis for accounting in the hospital services area, which had not been done previously, recognition that there should be an early introduction of that system, restructuring of the corporate management team, a project officer being instituted from May, et cetera, et cetera. All those things were commenced - and I asked this specifically - since May of 1991 and before the change of government in June.
Having asked those questions and established that there were many such things, I then asked this particular officer of the department whether it was true, therefore, that there had been no action on the part of the previous
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