This Government has reneged on its pledge to sort out hospitals

Opinion from the Irish Independent on 30 November 2015

Enda Kenny ran for election in 2007 pledging to “end the scandal of patients on trolleys”. By 2011, he was even more ambitious, promising that “the two-tier system of unequal access to hospital care will end”.

Hard choices to be made in the political parlour

Column from Irish Independent on 8 July 2015.

Game on for Budget 2016, with the impending general election in sight. Last Friday, Tánaiste Joan Burton warned interest groups at the Social Protection forum in Dublin Castle that “the Budget isn’t a parlour game in which everybody puts out what they would like”.

We are failing when people aged 102 are left on trolleys

Analysis from the Irish Independent on 10 June 2015 on ED over-crowding

Nine weeks after the publication of the Emergency Department Task Force Action Plan and nine years after then-health minister Mary Harney declared A&E overcrowding a ‘national emergency’, some of our oldest citizens are being exposed to ‘forms of torture’ in this country’s Emergency Departments (EDs).

An election crisis in waiting

My column from the Medical Independent on 19 February 2015

Extensive overcrowding in emergency departments and in our public hospitals continues to dominate the public and political radar in the early weeks and months of 2015. It is evident that there are continued high numbers on trolleys and in delayed discharges.

A speech not of ‘national importance’

Reductions in waiting lists achieved by throwing resources at the problem is not a sustainable solution. Here is my Medical Independent column from 20 February 2014. 

Perverse perks riddle the health service

Irish Daily Mail op ed sept 2011