Madam, - Minister for Health Mary Harney has pledged to resign the PD leadership before the year is out ( The Irish Times, October 16th). If she had any sense of decency she'd resign her Ministry too.
Of course she won't, given that she actively sought out the Health portfolio again once she was (unfortunately) returned to Government. Ms Harney is arguably the worst person to be at the helm of such an important ministry, given her party's ideology of individualism. There would be no reason why she would specifically seek the same portfolio except for the desire to pursue an agenda - an agenda for which this Government is collectively responsible, not Ms Harney alone.
In his column of October 16th, Fintan O'Toole correctly blames voters for tacitly supporting this disaster of a healthcare system in this year's general election. After being re-elected Ms Harney rapidly returned to form by saying on the airwaves that a friend of hers had spent time on a hospital trolley and "it wasn't such a bad experience". She compounded this insult by saying recently that queuing for health care wasn't such a bad thing as "people queue for buses all the time". She then had the temerity to tell Pat Kenny on RTÉ that the death of Susie Long was "intolerable" and "unacceptable to me". What disingenuous rubbish.
The idea of two-tier healthcare, whereby those who can pay get treated promptly and those who can't must wait, is deeply distasteful. Market forces and ability to pay should have no bearing on something which should be a basic human right. Even though the voters re-elected this Government I believe this view is shared by a great many people.
Blaming doctors and consultants is missing the point. It's the structure and foundations of this health care system that are wrong, not those working in it. If we continue to pursue this two-tier system we'll eventually end up with a situation like that which prevails in America, where vast swathes of the populace have no effective access to health care because the private health providers bumped up their rates and priced many people out of the market.
- Yours, etc,
DAVID MARLBOROUGH, Kenilworth Park, Dublin 6.
Madam, - If Mary Harney believes there is scope for job cuts in health, she should show leadership and be the first to resign.
- Yours, etc,
FRANK O'CONNOR, Glenageary, Co Dublin.