Irish Examiner view: Why do we accept such bad decisions around our health service?

The idea that public patients must be bussed from Munster to Derry or Belfast to have basic, life-changing treatment is shameful

The decision to build the National Children's Hospital  in the middle of a congested city remains bewildering. Picture: Brian Lawless/PA Wire

It would tempt fate to ask how the National Children’s Hospital is advancing. It’s some time since the last update told us the delivery date has been pushed towards some unknown date and that budgets, already well over €1bn out of kilter, have soared again. The project, first mooted in 1998, feeds cynicism around public affairs. 

If there is such a thing as national morale it is drained when great public projects like this are undermined by slapdash management, maladministration, pork-barrel localism, and disingenuous professional ambitions. The decision to build this national facility in the middle of a congested city remains bewildering.

If the any-year-now National Children’s Hospital is the apex symbol of what happens when accountability is just a notion, then the inordinate delays in cataract treatment — up to five years — fall into the straw-that-broke-everything category. The idea that public patients must be bussed from Munster to Derry or Belfast to have this basic, life-changing treatment is shameful. 

Brexit may complicate this, cross-border hip services too.

 Efforts to ensure that cross-border heart and cancer services can continue post-Brexit are underway. Efforts to deliver cataract service in the south are underway too, but it will be at least two years before they are available — another example of the culture undermining our health service and citizens’ faith in the State’s capacity to deliver basic services. Something’s gotta give.