Liveblogging this afternoon’s cabinet reshuffle speech by Brian Cowen in the Dáil. We expect Cowen to rise in the Dáil at 3:30 this afternoon and announce his cabinet team.

(If you prefer the ScribbleLive view of the liveblog, check out the SL page)

Isolated reports of Fianna Fail canvassing over the past week in Dublin and Limerick lead credence to the growing feeling that a Dail dissolution and a snap election is on the cards. Despite this, Paddy Power is now quoting 13/8 odds on a 2010 election, 7/4 on a 2011 and 2012 elections.

Here’s the history of selected Paddy Power’s year of election odds versus the Live Register figures for the end of 2008 through to 2010:

Not forgetting the banking crisis of September 2008, Budget 09 in December 2008, the Emergency Budget in April 2009 and the bite of negative equity throughout.

Paddy Power is also quoting the follow odds on the next minister to resign:

• 4/6    Mary Harney
• 11/4  Eamon O Cuiv
• 6/1    John Gormley
• 6/1    Noel Dempsey
• 16/1  Mary Coughlan
• 16/1  Brendan Smith
• 20/1  Brian Lenihan
• 33/1  Dermot Ahern
• 33/1  Michael Martin
• 33/1  Mary Hanafin
• 33/1  Eamon Ryan

Odds from Paddy Power, Live Register figures from the Central Statistics Office

Just as the explosive news that over 57,000 x-rays were not reviewed by a radiologist for over four years in the Tallaght Hospital, it comes to light that Mary Harney has jetted off to New Zealand a week early for her St Patrick’s Day trip.

This morning in the Dail, Enda Kenny said that Harney was in New Zealand. Cowen responded by insisting that she was there on government business.

Mary Harney granted just a single radio interview to Morning Ireland this morning.

What we know about the case so far

• One person whose x-ray was not read by a radiologist has died, another is seeking treatment.
• From the MI interview, the case  appears to have been highlighted after a change in guard at the head of Tallaght Hospital. Prof Conlon, the new head of hospital became aware of the problem last Summer.
• Harney knew about the problem back in December. Note the gap in months.
• Harney said she found about about the full scale of the problem yesterday, yet she said that the problem was “not a huge scandal” on Morning Ireland this morning as it only amounted to 6% of all x-rays taken in the period. Another three month gap.

Media and signals

Cowen was speaking in the Dail about putting measures in place to expedit dealing with the matter, but he seems to contrary Harney’s insistence that this was not a huge scandal. Distancing before a reshuffle?

Harney has only given that interview to Morning Ireland on the matter. Newstalk was unable to secure her for comment. Is that government business keeping her tied up?

Confidence in the Tallaght Hospital

On the back of misdiagnosis scandals at Ennis Regional Hospital and Portlaoise’s Midlands Regional Hospital and the centralisation of cancer diagnosis and care services in centres of excellence around the country, the mind boggles on how one of the biggest hospitals in the country could treat tens of thousands of patients this way for years.

Not only that. Tallaght Hospital is a teaching hospital. If the practise of not reviewing x-rays by a qualified radiologist was occurring at the hospital for years, what other practices of patient care were imparted to young student doctors? Can we be confident that the next generation of doctors taught there?

Tallaght General Hospital is rereading the x-rays not reviewed by a radiologist and the HSE says that it expects to complete the work for May. This leaves not just the 57,000 patients whose scans were not reviewed in the lurch but shakes the confidence of the hundreds of thousands of people that have had scans at Tallaght General Hospital in recent years.

On Timing

Timing is incredibly important here. Prof Conlon said he was informed of patients death yesterday at 4:30. Harney admitted she only knew about the scale of the problem yesterday. She admitted this morning that extra staff had been assigned to re-review patients’ x-rays. Would we have heard about this case if that patient had not died?

In some ways, the is the most shocking part of the scandal is the systemic foot-dragging in the HSE from X-ray to oversight in diagnosis and ministerial management. Foot-dragging at these different levels of the HSE is more than confidence-shaking, it’s an indictment of serious breaches in the most basic of parts of patient care - prevention. The modern Hippocratic Oath says “I will prevent disease whenever I can, for prevention is preferable to cure.” Indeed.

The HSE has established a helpline for patients and their families that are concerned about their treatment at Tallaght General Hospital.  Information and help is available on 1800 283 059. The helpline is open from 9am to 5pm.

The CSO has released numbers this morning showing that the amount of time lost to industrial disputes has jumped from 4,179 days in 2008 to 329,706 days last year. The jump amounts to a 7,889% increase in days lost to industrial action over 2008.

The one-day national strike on November 24th last  was undoubtedly the biggest single contributer to the jump. Almost 250,000 public sector employees including teachers, nurses, prison officers and even Oireachtas staff took part.

The amount of disputes almost doubled year-on-year from 2008′s number of 12 to 23.

Basescu on the election trail

Results from the hotly contested Romanian Presidential election broke last night. The Incumbant Traian Basescu, former Mayor of Bucharest, narrowly defeated his challenge, Social Democrat leader Mircea Geoana by a mere 0.6% of the vote – 50.3% to 49.7%.

Accusations of vote fraud are jumping left, right and centre from Geoana and his party.

The IMF stepped in earlier this year to prop up the ailing Romanian economy to the tune of $30 billion. Interestingly enough, the IMF released a survey last week citing it’s influence in preventing economic meltdown and calling for political reform in Eastern Europe – Latvia and Romania were called out especially. The very narrow election win margin coupled with bitter allegations of unsound electoral practices is the last thing that the IMF wants to hear.

A closer look at the precarious position of the government shows, the dangers run much deeper. Romania’s coalition government collapsed in October under a storm of alleged plans to enact voting fraud on massive scale to influence the outcome of the Presidential election. The junior partner party in government, the Social Democrats, withdrew from government leaving Besescu’s party, the Liberal Democrats, as a minority government with a budget for next year to pass through parliament. The pressure cooker of fingers of fraud being pointed and a minority government trying to draft and agree a budget was enough for the IMF to withhold €1.5 billion out of the €20 billion financial package to the country until a new government is formed and reform is seen to be progressing.

Romania was one of the fastest growing economies in the EU before the recessionary wave. With  a healthy GDP rate of 6.2% in 2007 and an unemployment rate of 3.9% in September of that year it was one of the best positioned economies to benefit the geographic slide of multinational investment from Western European and the US. In stark contrast, the World Economic Forecasts estimates the country’s GDP numbers to be in the region of -8.5% this year and a flat 0.5% in 2010.

Jobless numbers are also on the rise. October’s unemployment numbers stood at 7.1%, a 0.2% rise on the previous month. Eagle-eyed economists believe that those out of work will hit 8% before the year’s end. Unemployment now stands at a five-year high.

Some twenty years on from the bloody Romanian revolution, could the bite of economic woes kindle  memories of Communist entitlement?

It’s interesting to note that Romania was the only member of the Iron Curtain that executed its leader. Will the cut and thrust of the economic collapse backed by swell of public pain and political pressure force Basescu into a corner? Only time will tell.