Death in care: the dark side of the Celtic Tiger
A sudden death, and more so a totally needless death, is often incomprehensible.
Patrick Walsh's death is in this league, and is felt not just by his family but by his county and country.
What use is all our money, all our technology, all the consumer and State spending and this nebulous and indefinable 'feelgood factor' when Patrick Walsh, may the Lord be good to him, is now dead from a thoroughly preventable and treatable problem?
What good is it that a family has lost a loved brother, uncle and friend, and that they cannot get an answer for this needless death. No explanation as to what went wrong, no explanation as to why our health care system in the north-east failed so spectacularly, and for them so tragically?
Why do the Walsh family, the people of Monaghan, and indeed the taxpayers and citizens of Ireland only see blank faces when they ask pertinent questions as to the overall political thrust driving the management of the health system in this country?
Why do they hear only hollow expressions of sympathy which bring no one back and calls for the issue not to become a political football?
Surely the governance, performance, financing and management of one of our biggest areas of public spending health is a very political matter that deserves vigorous and probing debate?
The true measure of a civilised society is how we protect our weak and how we care for our sick and our aged.
Many Irish people have low regard, rightly or wrongly, for those whom they perceive to have done too little or nothing in the dreadful famine times.
In a time of bounty, how we address the litany of needless deaths in Monaghan since baby Bronagh Livingstone some three years ago, and indeed those before, will come to define the measure of our society 100 or 200 years from now.
Let us not embarrass ourselves in front of history any longer.
Sean McKiernan Jnr
Trinity Bungalow
Bailieboro
Co Cavan
