Irish Examiner view: Health reform is a challenge for the age

In our own efforts to develop an accessible single-tier health and social care system, we could learn a lot by looking at the history of our nearest neighbours's health system

Nancy Corrigan, played by Megan Cusack in the BBC series 'Call the Midwife'. Irish nurses were the backbone of Britain's NHS in the 1950s and '60s. Today, Irish personnel make up some 21% of staff in our neighbour's health system. File picture: BBC

The 75th anniversary of Britain’s National Health Service passed with relatively little comment in the Republic this week, perhaps because we were all so agog with news of high jinks emerging from Donnybrook. And perhaps because it is a painful reminder of our own failure, nearly eight decades after the achievement of our neighbour, to provide, via becalmed Sláintecare reforms, an accessible single-tier health and social care system, where equitable access to services is based on need, and not ability to pay.

And there is another complication to furrow collective brows. Ask anyone who supports the reunification of Ireland what their thoughts are on ensuring that the health benefits made available to citizens in the North — currently the most heavily subsidised area of the UK at patient level — will apply in the future, and you will struggle to receive convincing and credible answers. Like Sláintecare, it is a conundrum for the forward planning and strategic thinking teams.