Ministers can’t resist the lure of the local

There are no effective intermediaries between the constituency clinic and the cabinet table, says Gerard Howlin

THERE is sweetness about the naivety fuelling the row about the upgrade to hospitals in Wexford and Kilkenny.

The palaver about transparency is especially comic. Do you remember telling your mother you hadn’t been taking biscuits again? The unbelievable, but sweet lie of a child, all chubby cheeks and earnest eyes. Now we are supposed to be grown up. But we are still sticking our fingers in the biscuit tin. We are still telling mammy we didn’t do it.