Another embarrassing day: Health failures on a grand scale

It is an embarrassing coincidence that on the very day that, according to the Irish Nurses and Midwives Organisation, a 2019 record for of patients — 631 — on a trolley awaiting a hospital bed has been reached that a report suggested that the long-awaited National Children’s Hospital will cost more than €1.7bn — over double the 2014 estimates.

Five years ago that figure stood at €800m — it hit €983m in 2017 and stands at €1.43bn today.