Let’s start with a bit of positivity. I love the X-ray department of Beaumont hospital. You arrive with your GP letter, have a reasonable wait, get zapped and then five or so days later you get the result from your GP. It’s part of the health service that is efficient and delivers. Well, that’s what I thought until this week’s stories from The Irish Times. Thousands of slides needed to be reviewed due to the work of three locums.

Three locums.

They were employed to fill a gap.

Whether we like it or not, they were a sticking plaster. As we all know you can buy good quality plaster or the cheap stuff that might fall off if you look sideways at it.

It looks like the HSE did the latter. Whether it was constrained by the public service embargo or it hadn’t time to run a full competition, it decided that locums would be the best way to serve the hospitals mentioned.

Hiring a locum does not mean there is no need for an interview process. It is obvious there was one but there are questions. We read this morning that one of the locums was not registered with a specialist register of the Medical Council. This would have barred him from examining scans.

Using locums, particularly those not familiar with the Irish medical system, raises uncomfortable questions such as:

• Is their training up to the Irish standards? 
• How easy is it to check references?
• Is the HSE under so much pressure they don’t have time to check references?
• Do we actually need to employ more people on a full time basis rather than cutting back frontline staff and using locums to fill the gap?

Once again, the buck stops with the HSE. Will they be able to sort this out or will it be another case of 'roll your eyes' when we hear those three little letters???