Madam, - Minister for Health Mary Harney accuses hospital consultants of blocking negotiations for a new contract (The Irish Times, January 16th). She seems to have forgotten that neither she herself nor her senior officials have tabled as much as one word of a new contract, despite her continuing monologue in the media about the pivotal role of consultants in reforming the hospital services. Both she and her Department have shown incompetence by their inability to produce a draft revision of our contract.
The tactic of blaming consultants for the state of the hospital services has been used by this Minister and her predecessors in an effort to divert attention from their own failures. What about PPARS, the National Health Strategy's 3,000 beds, radiotherapy centres, the Tánaiste's own promise of 1,000 private beds on public hospital sites within three years, etc, etc? Consultants will not be bullied by her tactics, and neither will patients be fooled. - Yours, etc,
Dr JOSH KEAVENY, President, Irish Hospital Consultants' Association, Dundrum, Dublin 14.
Madam, - I share Bernard Slowey's indignation at consultants' fees (January 14th). According to OECD statistics Irish consultants are the best paid in the world. I myself am a regular visitor to France where a consultant's normal fee is €35 a visit, sometimes less (a GP costs €25 or less). Based on my own experience, this will even include procedures such as ear-dewaxing by an ENT consultant, freeze-treatment of warts by a dermatologist, manipulation for back pain by a rehabilitation consultant. And I am speaking about people who operate on an exclusively private basis with no payment from the state, unlike our own consultants with their generous state contracts. Of course the French are doubly blessed, as 70 per cent of what they pay in fees is reimbursed by the social security scheme, but that is an entirely separate issue.
I am amazed and baffled by the passivity of the Irish public in the face of the consultants' stranglehold on our healthcare system. - Yours, etc,
E. O'LOINSIGH, Castlegregory, Co Kerry.
Madam, - Bernard Slowey surely speaks for many when he expresses his shock at the rising cost of specialist medical consultations. Unlike him, I did not have to hand over €200, but I was recently charged €120 for an eight-minute chat (which imparted the kind of basic information I could have downloaded from the internet). Perhaps, though, the real point is this: how is it that the majority of us are obliged to settle for annual increases to wages or salary that just about keep us ahead of inflation, while medical consultants can, it seems, simply pluck a figure out of the air and in effect charge what they like?
Maybe it is time to devote to our medical practitioners the kind of attention we have long felt should be given to lawyers. - Yours, etc,
BRIAN COSGROVE, Cornelscourt, Dublin 18.