Health service shortcomings: Public beds for public patients

If you want to know what is wrong with our health service, don’t ask Simon Harris or the HSE. 

Instead, have a word with John Patrick Harrington. He is a 90-year-old man from Bantry in West Cork and is the primary carer for his blind wife.

Mr Harrington has just returned from Belfast where he underwent eye surgery for cataracts, having been told he would have to wait four years for a similar operation south of the border as a public patient.