Mary Harney...again!

London, England: Acting in response to an information request from the National Audit Office, a low-level employee in HM Revenue and Customs copies a database of child benefit recipients to CD and, in a breach of standard protocol, sends it by unregistered internal post. The CD fails to arrive at its intended destination and there is outrage that such sensitive data may have inadvertently been made public.

The chairman of HM Revenue and Customs, Paul Gray, was not the person responsible for ensuring successful delivery of the CD and he was not the person who breached the security protocol put in place to prevent precisely this type of thing happening - yet, as head of the organisation, he felt responsible for the calamity and resigned.


Dublin, Ireland: Mary Harney as Minister of Health, presides over an Irish Health System which has seen 9 women given false positives after mammograms were incorrectly analysed. A further 97 women have been recalled for surgical review after doubts emerged about their scans. and it is probable more women will be recalled when the results of almost 200 ultrasound tests are known. She refuses to resign, she refuses to accept any responsibility and it seems as though she refuses to do anything about it (well apart from looking as if she can't understand why people are coming to her about this and what exactly they expect her to do).


Of course, were Portloaise hospital to win some award because the staff prevented the spread of MRSA by actually washing their hands after they'd been to the toilet, Harney would clamber over her mountain of profiteroles to appear in front of RTÉ's cameras for the sake of a few political points. She would smile, nod her jowly head and take all the credit as if she has spent all her time standing in the toilets with a stack of paper towels, some juicy fruits and a selection of designer fragrances, personally squirting the soap onto the hands of the over worked and under paid employees before they left.

You can't have it both ways Mary.