Harney oversaw demise of our health system

MUCH of what Matt Cooper writes about Mary Harney (January 15) cannot be argued with and it is important to remind us all that she and her “free market” thinking was at the core of what pushed our country into ruin.

Harney’s malign ideology was also let loose on our health service and the result has been the copperfastening of the vulgar two-tier system where money determines the speed of access rather than medical need.

We are now also witnessing the extraordinary situation that while public wards are being closed and mothballed, speculators are applying to local authorities to build private hospitals within a stone’s throw of the closed public ones. The divisions in our society are being woven into its very fabric. As a result of all this we are seeing reports again of patients being put in grave danger of infection in overcrowded public A&Es. Even the rather straightforward solving of the outrageous long waiting times was fluffed as she allowed ideology to intervene, resulting in a convoluted quangoesque approach which resulted in only creating an additional lair of bureaucracy where there is not enough beans to go around to keep the counters occupied.