Madam, - Having watched Prime Time, I am horrified that the A&E situation is worse now than it was two years ago, when I had three admissions to hospitals via A&E departments.
It is now crisis time, with sick people preferring to die at home rather than be subjected to the unforgivable circus that is our emergency health service, c/o Mary Harney, who publicly admitted than she didn't even have knowledge of the critical process of assessing a patient. She should be sacked straight away.
A new Minister for Health should be appointed, ideally a consultant doctor who has the experience and expertise of treating the sick. An emergency taskforce should be set up to take the HSE apart like a faulty machine, its bits laid out for scrutiny and repair, and put back together as a sparkling, vital and fully operational Health Ministry.
The fault lies blatantly at the top. - Yours, etc,
EILEEN LAWLOR, Bundoran, Co Donegal.
Madam, - I have observed from afar and on occasion have seen close-up the manifestations of the Celtic Tiger. I was most impressed and very happy to see a prosperous Ireland, so unlike the one I left in 1958.
I watched last Monday's Prime Time - investigative journalism at its best, I might add - and was stunned to see the appalling conditions under which patients and staff have to survive in Irish A&E departments.
Ireland is awash with money, the third richest country in Europe I have heard, from the success of the Celtic Tiger and the dole from the EU. To allow patients and staff to suffer in this way is either incompetence, to be kind, or criminal negligence, to be frank.
If friends ask me about visiting Ireland, which happens quite frequently, my answer now will be: "Don't plan on having a medical emergency when you are there. Go to some other European country where the medical services are efficient and where you will be treated with dignity."
I have to say that until the situation is rectified I shall not be in a hurry to return. - Yours, etc,
J. DERECK JEFFERS, Groveland, California, USA.