Madam, - It's time our elected TDs took collective responsibility for the shortcomings in the health service. As the Minister puts it, we are willing to think strategically, but we act locally. It is understandable that individual TDs act locally when their re-election depends on it, but it is up both to governments and to the main opposition parties to show leadership.
I have attended separate meetings with the Minister for Health, the Labour spokesperson for health and the previous Fine Gael spokesperson. There seems to be little difference in their approach to resolving the many complex issues save for some ideology on public and private mix.
I cannot be sure, but I suspect Prof Drumm is doing the best he can, or indeed as well as others could do, given the complex and political structure he has to work within, but best is not good enough for those who have been needlessly let down so badly by service failures.
The HSE structure has evolved over 40 to 50 years as a result of successive and often good policy decisions by Governments. It often happens that incremental developments result in a dysfunctional structure where the sum of the parts fail to work cohesively, drawing disproportionate criticism to the entire service. Adding in the plethora of vested interests (for whatever reasons, good or bad) results in an organisation that is nearly totally resistant to change: you have the HSE.
There are a lot of positives in our health service but it must be disheartening for the 100,000 or so employees in the service constantly to read criticisms of the organisation they work for. I urge the Minister and the opposition spokespersons to sit together and agree the way forward, even if that means some compromises, and give the chief executive continuity of support to negotiate and implement the changes that all stakeholders deserve. - Yours, etc,
BRENDAN O'DONOGHUE, (former CEO, St Patrick's Psychiatric Hospital), Dublin 14.
Madam, - Is it just I who has grown weary of the PR spin passed off as a solution to the latest Health Service crisis? People don't want "centres of excellence" and "multidisciplinary teams"; they want functioning hospitals staffed by competent people working together.
Why should medical facilities, centralised or otherwise, be anything other than "excellent"? Evoking the term "excellence" might have been acceptable in the 1980s when the label became a by-word in management consultant circles, but to do so now tells us much about the outdated mentality of those running the HSE and the Department of Health and Children. As for "multidisciplinary teams", well, if any team were not multidisciplinary, then by definition it would not be a team.
Whatever happened to plain language when it comes to discussing the health service in this country? - Yours, etc,
ULTAN Ó BROIN, South Circular Road, Dublin 8.
Madam, - Would it be possible to remove the term "centres of excellence" from the English language, along with many other similarly meaningless quasi-political words, terms and phrases? - Yours, etc,
PAT HERLIHY, Fuchsia Drive, Ballybunnion, Co Kerry.
Madam, - It is ironic that a spokesman for Minister for Health Mary Harney confirmed he had told the Late Late Show programme team that the proposed panel, to discuss the health service, was "unbalanced" (The Irish Times, November 12th).
Many people consider that the PD influence in the Government is unbalanced, especially now that only 2 per cent of voters would give the party a first-preference vote. - Yours, etc,
PATRICK O'BYRNE, Shandon Crescent, Phibsborough, Dublin 7.