FOLLOWING HSE plans to withdraw all cancer services north of Galway Bay, to close almost every A&E in the north-east, to decimate pharmacy services, to deny life-changing surgery to a crippled child in Co Cork and to lay off dozens of nurses from Tullamore hospital, I see Prof Brendan Drumm has had another brainwave: hospital patients should have their blood tests performed in their local post offices.

YOUR report headlined ‘Pharmacists have to swallow similar medicine as taxi drivers’ (Irish Examiner, November 17) contained several inaccuracies and was incorrect in its basic premise that pharmacists are uncompetitive and facing major regulatory liberalisation in the new year.