Madam, - Dr Gerry Burke, who has referred the agreement between the HSE and the Beacon Medical Group to the Competition Authority, makes his case against hospital co-location in your Letters page of August 29th.
Dr Burke motors along nicely until his penultimate paragraph, where he goes off the road spectacularly. At that point he suggests that "the best thing that could happen now is that the co-located hospitals would be built swiftly and then be expropriated by the State, renouncing any previous agreements".
Whatever about his medical qualifications, Dr Burke must have studied law at the Robert Mugabe and Joseph Stalin School of Governance. In slightly plainer English, Dr Burke has suggested that the Government steal property and walk away from a bond into which it entered freely.
None of us would be safe in our beds - hospital or otherwise - in a country which countenanced such actions. - Yours, etc,
PATRICK D. DOYLE,
Summerville,
Clontarf Road,
Dublin 3.