Surveys tend to show that voters rate health as being one of if not the issue which the public expects politicians to sort out. There has been much criticism of the Irish health administration, but moaning and groaning obscures the fact that some things have changed for the better. Waiting lists have fallen, students seem to be queuing up to become nurses and huge investment is underway in the physical upgrading of hospitals all over the country.
The year also saw the conception, gestation and birth - and a long labour it was too - of the national health strategy. It is easy to overestimate the important of the strategy to the populace - this reporter has not heard it mentioned once in the kitchens or bars of Ireland, though this may be a result of spending too much time in one and not enough in the other.
It is also easy to underestimate the importance of the strategy. The fact is, it represents an impressive and detailed attempt to restructure the health system.
The many thousands of community nursing beds (these are similar to nursing homes run by health boards) and the development of family doctor services to include nurses, physiotherapists, occupational therapists and so on will - if they ever happen - make a huge impact on the availability of health services.
But so far all we've got is the prescription and it will take up to ten years to fill it. What 2001 has brought is some improvement and a clearer picture of what needs to happen.
Whatever the future may promise, it remains the case that in many hospitals, a trip to the emergency department can be the start of an ordeal lasting 24 hours or more for a bed. When the patient finally gets the bed, it can mean a new ordeal for someone else having a long-awaited operation cancelled on the day before or, indeed, on the morning itself, because the bed has been taken by someone from emergency, is an all-too-common experience. This is where those community nursing beds come in. Research at Tallaght Hospital suggested during the year that excessive stays in emergency departments and cancellation of operations could be eliminated if we had enough rehabilitation and long-stay beds for patients who no longer need to be in acute beds. The value of community nursing beds is that they can be located in or close to the community in which the patient lives. Being sent to a nursing home thirty or forty miles away - and this happens all over the country - is not an experience any of us would want for ourselves or our family.
Nursing home beds are, in any case, in short supply as hospitals found during the year as they searched high and low for suitable places for non-acute patients. And as relatives found out, nursing home costs are terribly high and an increase in the State subsidy for patients did not help in all cases with some homes, according to the Minister, Micheβl Martin, simply increasing their charges in response.
The year began with a debate on the place of nursing homes in the healthcare system and ended with a row over medical cards.
That row was sparked when the Minister for Health and Children revealed that there would be no widening in the eligibility for medical cards until 2003 - bad news for the many people on low pay who do not qualify for a medical card and who cannot afford necessary doctors' visits for themselves and their children.
Ah, but we are in an election year with a vengeance, so stand by for promises of a breath-taking widening of eligibility from, well, everybody. It also emerged this year that about 30 per cent of procedures in public hospitals are on people with medical insurance although only 20 per cent of beds are "private". Does this mean private patients are being given a disproportionate level of access by consultants?
Accountants Deloitte & Touche found no evidence for this in a report for the Minister, but parts of the national health strategy seem to be based on the belief that it happens. This, presumably, is why the strategy says that if public waiting list targets are not being met, particular hospitals will be told to stop admitting private patients.
In the meantime, keep paying your health insurance premiums.