Irish Examiner view: HSE treatment of medical equipment is sickening
A line of walking aids outside a HSE storage facility in Ardcavan, Wexford. Picture: Deirdre Taaffe
As reported by Neil Michael in this newspaper, Wexford mother Deirdre Taaffe — whose son had to wait six weeks for a wheelchair — has called on the HSE to explain why “nearly new” walking aids are being stored in the open air behind a supply depot.
Ms Taaffe’s son eventually got a wheelchair and crutches. However, when she returned them, she was told the HSE would only take back the wheelchair.
“They told me to bring it to the side of the building and leave it there... There were at least 20 — and maybe as many as 30 — wheelchairs, various walking frames, and I noticed a few hoists for lifting people out of beds,” she said.
In reply, the HSE said: “The HSE has a storage facility at the Ardcavan in Wexford, where collected items are stored — either for forwarding on for further attention or awaiting collection for recycling or disposal.”
This is bad practice from the organisation. For some, it will just be proof of their suspicions about the HSE — with many people having experienced an apparently arbitrary allocation of resources, along with an almost tangible disdain for the organisation’s service users, and a blasé attitude to valuable equipment.
All of this is topped off by a lack of accountability.
The dumping of medical equipment behind a building at the mercy of all weathers is a terrible waste of resources, but past experience of HSE errors suggests that it is unlikely that anyone will be held responsible.
Ireland’s first indoor cycling track has been approved by the minister for sport, with a 250m track to be built at the National Sports Campus in Abbotstown, Dublin.
The project also includes badminton facilities and is expected to be ready for action in 2027, though past experiences, from the National Children’s Hospital to the Cork Event Centre, have taught us to be cautious when it comes to completion dates.
Minister Catherine Martin said the centre “will provide state-of-the-art track cycling facilities for our cycling athletes who currently have to travel abroad for both training and competition”.
It’s certainly laudable to provide facilities to our athletes which enable them to stay in Ireland, but another point can surely be made here — how easy will it be for cycling athletes living far from Dublin to access the centre in Abbotstown?
Clearly it is not feasible to have state-of-the-art Olympic class facilities for every sport allocated to every corner of the country, but athletes from north and south-western parts of the country might find it more practical to head overseas for training than travelling to a venue five hours’ drive away on a regular basis.
Also, while using Olympic success to encourage general participation is a slightly different challenge, it is not helped by concentrating facilities in one or two locations.
Ensuring as many people as possible have reasonable access to such facilities is a tall order, but it is necessary in the interests of fairness — a prerequisite no matter the sport.
This week’s edition came in the form of remarks made by the former president at a National Association of Black Journalists, when he questioned the racial identity of his likely opponent in the presidential election, vice president Kamala Harris. As a gauge of how outrageous Mr Trump’s comments were, some of his fellow Republicans have been critical of him as a result, a truly rare occurrence.
Before this controversy Mr Trump’s promise that his followers “won’t have to vote any more” after the next election had grabbed the headlines, with many viewing that comment as a non-veiled threat to the democratic process.
There was a time in the recent past when such reckless comments would have torpedoed any political campaign, but in the current climate they seem to strengthen candidate visibility instead.
Less attention has been paid to Mr Trump’s positioning of himself on social media as a cryptocurrency or Bitcoin president. On one level it is a canny move, given the preponderance of crypto advocates among right-wing billionaires, a cohort of potential supporters he is keen on.
However, it is also worth pointing out that many observers’ familiarity with cryptocurrency is based on seeing the likes of Sam Bankman-Fried, owner of crypto exchange firm FTX, get sentenced to 25 years in prison last March for one of the largest financial frauds in history.
An area synonymous with hype and bluster, fraud and lengthy jail sentences may be more appropriate for Mr Trump than he realises.
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