Patients, taxpayers ‘deserve honesty’

PATIENTS and taxpayers deserve a little more honesty from government, managers, and unions on how health services should be organised and funded, a top trade unionist said yesterday.

“Only then will we build confidence that we are genuinely working towards a service that is worth paying for, and which is characterised by quality and fairness,” IMPACT general secretary Kevin Callinan said.

Mr Callinan, in his address to the union’s biennial conference of its health and welfare division in Tullamore, Co Offaly, said the collective failure to present real quality and fairness was inhibiting the debate on how services should be organised.