HSE strategy putting lives at risk

OVER the past five years, the Health Service Executive has waged an unrelenting campaign to downgrade and ultimately destroy rural hospitals throughout Ireland.

Dundalk, Monaghan, Ennis and Roscommon have all fallen victim to this HSE crusade. The unpalatable fact is that in 1980 this nation had a population of 3 million with 18,000 acute hospital beds.

Today we have 11,300 to serve 4.5 million citizens. However, the number of administrators, operating in a culture of unparalleled incompetence and unaccountability, has almost trebled since 1997. Our health service now has more than 17,000 full-time bureaucrats protected by “jobs for life” regardless of performance.