United front needed to tackle health crisis

THERE is general acceptance among most people that our health service is in crisis.

Despite all the well-intentioned efforts to address the problem, one senses a growing fatalism, almost despair. One symptom of this is the conventional wisdom among commentators that few politicians would want the health ministry.

There were two major crises in the 1980s which gave rise to a similar sense of hopelessness: the Troubles in Northern Ireland and our dire economic situation in the Republic.