Public sector options - Figures leave no room for easy choices

RIGHTLY or wrongly the Health Service Executive has come to symbolise the kind of publicly funded quagmire that cries out for root-and-branch reform.

Our health service is not alone in this, nearly every national service, no matter how well funded or efficient, is criticised. That is, naturally enough, easier to understand than to endure but a nation’s health service is where a citizen’s relationship with the state is at its sharpest and most intimate. If you’re sick you want a cure, not a hospital trolley in a busy corridor or a fluffy policy proposal.

In the few short years since it was establish the HSE has employed and promoted far more administrators than seems reasonable. It has also assumed attitudes inappropriate for a public service, especially in regard to accountability.