Healthcare crisis - Waste of resources a scandal

As the Dáil returns this week after its protracted annual summer holidays, the Government faces a plethora of contentious issues, which have to be addressed urgently.

Not least of those are the disturbing and hugely embarrassing revelations about tax evader Michael Collins, and his Fianna Fáil colleague GV Wright who faces a drink-driving charge in which a woman was seriously injured.

Those are matters which undermine the confidence of the people of the probity of public representatives who are an inherent part of the legislative process in this country.

So, too, is cynicism encouraged and confidence diminished in other crucial aspects which affect people’s lives, such as healthcare. As this newspaper highlights today, valuable hospital resources are being wantonly wasted.

It is untenable that there should be healthcare facilities worth up to €150 million lying idle around the country because of a shortage of Government funding. The situation is nothing short of a national scandal.

Apart from 45 occupied beds, a new €96.37 million hospital at Blanchardstown remains unused, and when the other facilities there become available to a hard-pressed public waiting for health services is not known.

Other examples of such disgraceful short-sightedness in planning for vital health services are replicated in other parts of the country. Whether it is the lack of equipment in the €40 million cardiac surgery unit, the €10 million radiotherapy in the Western Health Board, or the elderly care unit in the midlands, which is unoccupied because there is no money to equip it, there is glaring evidence of bureaucratic bungling.

Shortage of staffing, lack of equipment and facilities are unacceptable excuses why such desperately needed avenues are not available now to people who are waiting intolerably long periods for medical treatment.

It would appear to be a fundamental tenet of common sense, and, indeed, economics, that in the planning and construction of a hospital and other essential medical facilities, that provision would be included to ensure they could actually carry out the functions for which they were designed.

That is obviously not the case and it is an indictment of the Government and the Department of Health that people are being deprived of a decent health service for the simple reason that new buildings are closed, or partially closed, to them because there is not the staff or equipment to allow them function.

There is a raft of urgent issues which has to be addressed, from the re-structuring of the health service, to the cost of housing, from education to public services, the lack gardaí on the streets, as well, of course, as the question of ethical standards in public office.

Recent opinion polls have demonstrated the abysmal regard in which the electorate hold the main government party, but unfortunately, public appraisal of the opposition parties is not too flattering either.

Given that there is general disillusionment with the Government, it is about time that the main opposition parties woke up to the fact that the people need a constructively critical voice in our national parliament.