Sir, – I note with interest that Minister for Health James Reilly, at the MacGill Summer School, has resurrected the promise of free GP visits for children. The genesis of such a scheme is in the Public Health Act of 1947 – those who would have benefited from such a scheme, if implemented, are the people who will be collecting their pensions for the first time this year, 66 years later.
Let’s hope it doesn’t take another lifetime to roll out the promise of a universal health care system that was also envisaged within the 1947 Act as the first step to such ambitions. Change seems to visit less regularly than promises at Hawkins House. – Yours, etc,
BRIAN STOKES,
Gardiners Hill,
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St Luke’s,
Cork.