Reflections on Ireland’s Ailing National Health Service.

international | health / disability issues | opinion/analysis Wednesday December 09, 2020 22:04 by Joe Terry

Ireland’s health care languishes in the doldrums.

Reflections on Ireland’s Ailing National Health Service.

On the removal of Tony O’Brien, forced to step down from his role as Chief Executive Officer of the Health Service Executive resulting from the Cervical Check scandal, a perception of high hopes prevailed that his successor would cure the administrative ills of the national health service. That aspiration has come to nothing. Instead, O’Brien’s successor is busying his time making ever-changing conflicting Corvid 19 medical statements outside of his remit. Has this administrator, in the eyes of many a costly “messenger-boy”, any qualifications to make medical pronouncements? No evidence shows that he, swaddled among over two thousand employees earning in excess of a hundred thousand euros per annum, has made the HSE organisation more efficient. Nor, has public health care improved, or indeed the working conditions of doctors and nurses made any better.

Since his tenure commenced, at least three more executives on salaries of two hundred and fifty thousand euros per annum have joined the club. There is no indication of the public getting better value for the tax they pay to sustain the service. Should the incumbent Director-General of the HSE be removed from the position he holds? Should the HSE be disbanded and the administration of the country’s health care revert to the autonomous and locally accountable regional health boards in existence before the establishment of the HSE by Micheál Martin when he was the Minister for Health. MainStream Media, aka establishment media, play the role of HSE propaganda propagation, as well as the state broadcaster fronted by exorbitantly-paid presenters (propagandists). The orchestrated media spin includes bombardment by photographs of health service “celebrities”. The public, knowing what those look like, and not in any way interested, are paying for the photo-op charade.

Meanwhile, Ireland’s health care languishes in the doldrums.