Letters to the Editor: We have the power to fix Ireland's health crisis
'The scandal in healthcare in Ireland is we have the money, the laws, and the skills to solve our health crisis.' Stock picture: Colin Keegan/Collins
We seem to be beyond capacity to be outraged by the most recent revelations about the National Treatment Purchase Fund or Children’s Health Ireland. The solution to Ireland’s failed healthcare model is very simple: Buy out the private system, total value, €10bn-€12bn.
The EU services of general economic interest (SGEI) is a crucial EU legal concept that allows governments to intervene in markets and buy out, fund, or provide services directly, including in healthcare, without violating EU competition or state aid rules.
If we took the punch bowl out of the trough, the entire medical profession could focus on helping people, regardless of their wealth. The solution is very simple.
The scandal in healthcare in Ireland is we have the money, the laws, and the skills to solve our health crisis. The bigger scandal is that we seem determined to maintain it.
Dr Chris Luke has highlighted the dangers facing people working in healthcare settings — ‘Policing policy needs everyone’s input’ (Irish Examiner, June 2). On a daily basis, we see the potential for violence at so many levels in our capital city, not least in the area of homelessness. Addiction plays a huge part in creating an atmosphere of fear.
Dr Luke continues to challenge and inspire us, no more so than in the closing lines: “I am always reassured when I see a Garda uniform or two on the busy streets of our cities, knowing they represent the best of us, protecting us, reassuring us and keeping watch over us.”
Seeing more gardaí on our streets is so encouraging. May they be valued, inspired, and kept safe and well.
I’d like to raise an issue that’s affecting a lot of people in Cork: the lack of subtitled films in our cinemas.
Right now, if you rely on subtitles, your options are really limited. There’s one subtitled film on Monday at The Arc Cinema, and two more on Thursdays at The Reel Picture in Blackpool and Ballincollig. That’s it for the week. Sure, there are kids’ films at Mahon Point on the weekends, but they’re sensory screenings, lights on, kids free to roam — which isn’t really a suitable experience for adults.
It’s great that subtitled shows exist at all, but let’s be honest: it’s not enough. The most popular cinema nights, Friday and Saturday, have no subtitled options. Most of the screenings that are available happen around 5pm; people in full-time work often can’t make them.
And then there’s the pricing. One cinema has a brilliant deal — two tickets for €13, but none of the subtitled screenings fall under this offer. Another has a €14.99 monthly pass to see unlimited films, but again, the only accessible options are children’s shows. It feels like people who need subtitles are being left out of all the good stuff.
We’re living in 2025, in a community full of people from different backgrounds and with different needs. Subtitles help deaf and hard-of-hearing people, of course, but they also support non-native English speakers, people with auditory processing issues, and anyone who just finds it easier to follow along with text.
Streaming platforms like Netflix get it, subtitles are standard. One survey showed more than 30% of Irish people use subtitles regularly and, globally, 40% of Netflix users have them on all the time. Why can’t cinemas do the same?
It’s time for more inclusive cinema in Cork. Subtitles should be available on more films, more often, at times when people can actually go and without having to miss out on deals that others get.
Let’s make cinema accessible for everyone.
Pope Leo XIV is the most un-American American, in that he hasn’t lived in the United States for many years. He spent a lot of his time living in Europe and in Latin America, and he has Peruvian citizenship. He is a mathematician. He actually taught maths and physics in an American high school. This would indicate to me that he has a scientific brain where rational solutions are sought.
This suggests to me that he has a kind of brain where he likes everything to be in its place. Pope Francis himself liked to say that he wanted to bring chaos to the Church. Francis was a classic kind of disruptor, and I do think that what we will see under Pope Leo is more order, with everything being in its place. I would speculate that he is not going to be a radical pope. I believe that he will be more centrist and very much a unity candidate.
There is much speculation that Gerry Adams, fresh from his court victory over the BBC, will now stand for the presidency of Ireland.
Mr Adams is also expected to appear next March at an unrelated civil case in London which seeks to establish that he had “command and control” over the IRA throughout the Troubles, according to the lawyer leading the action.
The idea of our president defending a claim brought by victims of terrorism for vindicatory damages in the Royal Courts of Justice seems, at the very least, unedifying.
As husband to the late Eileen O’Sullivan, a former regional winner of Housewife of the Year contest in 1978, I would question the motive behind the way Monday night’s documentary Housewife of the Year was presented.
The programme was not about the contest Calor Kosangas sponsored some decades ago, which was ‘light entertainment’. It was more like a current affairs programme of Church- and religion-bashing and the backward ways of Ireland then. The manner in which that programme on Monday night was presented should not have been called Housewife of the Year, as it was a current affairs effort not a light entertainment programme.
It should have shown some respect to the contestants of the time, to Calor Kosangas, to RTÉ and its production teams who put an exceptional amount of work and effort to make it the show it was.
I remember the night in Neptune Stadium when my wife won the regional contest, there wasn’t standing room there and the crowd lifted the roof off it. It was a very enjoyable show then, and the majority of the country looked forward to it — not as a story of sorrow and woes — but sheer enjoyment.
I think that it’s extremely sad when you see a documentary like Housewife of the Year depicting the event in such a manner to help sell it abroad for financial reward.
On Friday, May 30, as he winded down his illustrious and flawless career as a radio broadcaster, Joe Duffy interviewed a grieving young Palestinian mother. As if he could not help himself, out popped the inevitable question “and what about October 7?”.
In that single sentence, he flushed his credibility as both a journalist and a human being down the drain.
Did any grieving relative of the victims of the October 7 attacks ever find themselves having to answer the question, “and what about Gaza 2008?”, or even Gaza 2012? Gaza 2014? Gaza 2018 ? Gaza 2021? Gaza 2023-25?
A genocide has unfolded in waves of stomach-churning horror before the world’s eyes, and RTÉ is still compelled to trot out the narrative that this is a war of equals requiring ‘balance’.
