Madam, – Shane Molloy (October 2nd) asserts that Minister for Health Mary Harney is putting the lives of children at risk by using the State’s financial difficulties as a justification for imposing budget cuts on Our Lady’s Hospital for Sick Children, Crumlin.
He further states that it is obvious these cuts were part of a campaign to encourage the hospitals to co-operate with the locating of the new national children’s hospital at the Mater.
What is obvious is that the hospital’s annual reports for 2005 and 2008 show that in that four-year period the number of patients increased by 12 per cent and the managerial/administrative staff employed there rose by 20 per cent (and nursing staff by 30 per cent).
What is not obvious is why an organisation with 12 per cent more patients needs 20 per cent more managers to deal with the extra workload. What is not obvious is why the cutbacks apparently hit cardiac waiting lists – and reportedly other services to sick children – but not the ever lengthening list of paid bureaucrats. What is not obvious either is why there should be any objections to treating sick children in a new state-of-the-art facility, as opposed to a facility described by Dr Ronnie Pollack nearly five years ago as unfit for purpose. – Yours, etc,