Previous healthcare decisions ‘contradictory’

A number of healthcare decisions made by previous governments were incoherent, contradictory, and incompatible with a strong outcome, said HSE director general Tony O’Brien.

“If we want a better outcome, we need a long-term, settled plan. Without that we will not succeed,” he told a major health conference in Dublin yesterday.

“I hope that the next programme for government will create the conditions in which we can have an open, all-party, cross-society consensus about what we want our healthcare system to be like, not in five years or 10 years, but for the next 20.”