Hands off mental care - Funding the health service

OVER the years, a squadron of able and committed politicians fled the health ministry without being able to record substantive, game-changing success or reform.

Each beaten docket after the other seems to show the signs that suggest they might have been kidnapped by aliens and exposed to a terrible world they never imagined existed. One, Brian Cowen, infamously described the adventure as like being in “Angola because there were landmines everywhere”.

Yesterday’s suggestions that a third of the funds ring-fenced for mental care services might be pillaged to support other areas in our dysfunctional, mismanaged health service showcase a state of near anarchy. The Irish Examiner has reported that mental-health services closely avoided having no budget of any kind allocated in last December’s budget until the minister responsible — Kathleen Lynch — threatened to resign. It confirms that something like heartless anarchy prevails.