A sick formula: Too much ideology and too little political accountability

The trend towards centralisation started in 1970 and has never really stopped. And so, now, a head office in Dublin has ultimate responsibility for, say, home help for an elderly woman in Clonakilty, just as it has for the design and financing of a major new children’s hospital in Dublin.

THE oldest story in the book, of course, is the one about the tourist in Ireland asking directions, and being told “if I wanted to get there, I’d never have started from here”.

Every time you start to wonder about how our health system has become so complex, so remote and so overburdened, you find yourself giving the same answer.