‘Cautious optimism’? New unambitious targets for hospital wait times

On Wednesday 25 January, Minister James Reilly held a news conference to announce new targets on reducing the numbers of trolleys and wait times for hospital treatment. It was good news all-round… ‘Cautious optimism’ was the prevailing sentiment of the day.

Reilly’ rejects HSE 2012 Service Plan: pure optics and a damage limitation exercise

Having received a hammering from the print media over the holiday period, Minister James Reilly took a media offensive on 5  January 2012 on  RTE Radio with appearances on the Pat Kenny show and an interview with Fergal Bowers on the News at One. In my opinion, these media appearances were a combination of damage limitation and pure optics…

Programme for Government health commitments, potentially ‘revolutionary’

The first sentence in the health section the new programme for government reads ‘this government is the first in the history of the State that is committed to developing a universal, single tier health services, which guarantees access to medical care based on need, not income’. The opening line of the full document refers to a ‘democratic revolution’ that took place on election day, how with the stroke of a pen the public had demanded change.