Parties need to reach consensus on fixing our health service

Analysis from Irish Independent on 7 November 2015

They say insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results. Einstein’s cliché applies perfectly to political and management responses to the myriad of crises in our health system.

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Rude health I: Mary Harney must go

Here is my first column in Punt magazine:

A week is a long time in health politics…

This time one week ago, no one knew about the 57,000 plus unreported x rays in Tallaght hospital, no one had spoken openly about the 3,000 or 30,000 unread GP referral letters. Six days on from the story being broken by RTE’s Fergal Bowers, no one from the hospital has claimed responsibility, and according to themselves, neither the Minister nor the HSE are responsible. So what on earth is going on??  

What are the Greens up to?

As the Green party team are deep in negotiation with Fianna Fáil over a new Programme for Government, one of their policy demands is a one tiered universal health system. What on earth are they at?

The policy demand of a one tiered universal health system was part of the leaked ‘early draft of a discussion document’ to the media. They are v cross about the leak. The Green party are refusing to comment on any content of the negotiations, as they don’t want to discuss deliberations in public. But they are not denying that it is in there either and referred me back to their health policy document. So what are the implications of this demand?