More incompetence costs taxpayers dearly

I was angered to read the second front-page story for last Saturday’s edition ‘€140k for woman who had swab left inside her’ (Irish Examiner, July 4). 

Yet again there has been a major medical blunder and, yet again, decent taxpayers, usually including the victim, will have to pick up the cost.

Where is the name of the person responsible for the blundering? It was not the hospital building or the equipment that was faulty. It was a person, or persons, who should be fired for negligence or, at the very least, forced to pay the damages out of their huge salaries.

But it never happens, does it? It would be as likely as Bertie and Biffo being made to make good the financial destruction of our country which, recently, they admitted responsibility for.

Given the ability of decent humans to organise anything from Glastonbury to the Electric Picnic, Greenpeace; a huge alternative health network; first-aid classes; senior citizens’ dinners and Christmas lights, I am starting to wonder if we would not be better off without a government of hugely expensive, non-accountable, incompetents.

My granny could have done it better than all of them.

Richard Barton

Tinahely

Co Wicklow