Sanity must prevail over Limerick unit

IT is an outrage that the Department of Health has effectively been frustrating a proposal to help the most vulnerable people in society — people who are ill with cancer.

The department has procrastinated over an offer by a private group to fund a radiotherapy service in Limerick.

All governments have to make hard, unpalatable decisions, and this Government concluded, on the basis of a commissioned report, that radiotherapy services should be located in Dublin, Cork and Galway. Limiting the service to three locations may have been dictated by the availability of public finances, but it is an affront to common sense and human dignity that the department should behave as if that decision would preclude others from setting up units elsewhere.