The big freeze - State staff deserve a huge thanks

PRAISE for public servants is praise indeed. Much maligned and often criticised, there is no denying those responsible for delivering vital services to the public performed heroically under pressure during the most severe weather conditions since records began.

Thanks to the bravery of ambulance crews, soldiers and voluntary groups many people were given a new lease on life during the Christmas freeze.

That the HSE has commended those at the coalface is entirely fitting. Were it not for their selfless actions, seriously ill children would not have reached hospital in time for urgent treatment. Nor would injured patients from remote areas have received life saving operations.

The HSE expression of thanks for the unseen individuals catapulted into the frontline of the health service is fully warranted. Nor should this praise be confined to a few. When snow and ice gripped the nation, those in the front line of public services right across the board acted unselfishly and unstintingly.

Helicopter pilots risked their lives to save others. Members of the armed forces were ready to act in every kind of emergency, whether flying injured people to hospital or delivering fodder to starving farm animals.

Buses were kept going in all but the most severe weather conditions. Indeed, bus services, were even provided on Christmas Day.

A debt of gratitude is also owed to Irish airport personnel who struggled against the elements to keep runways open. Praise is also due to nurses, doctors, physiotherapists and others in the health service who tended people injured by falls on icy footpaths or in accidents on roads that resembled ice-rinks.

ESB workers who restored power to householders helped to undo some of the self-inflicted damage on this state-run company by callous threats to cut off families in arrears during bad Arctic weather.

Members of the Garda Síochána performed vital duties under difficult conditions, ranging from investigations of murder to one of the worst fatal road accidents of recent times.

For public service workers at the coalface, from lifeboat members to local authority gritters, no praise is high enough.