A chara, – So Micheál Martin is getting exercised about patients having to spend time on hospital trolleys while waiting for a hospital bed ("Numbers on hospital trolleys 26 per cent higher than a year ago", January 12th).
This seems to be another symptom of the total memory loss that has been plaguing Fianna Fáil for the past five years or so. He seems to have forgotten that hospital trolleys were a feature of our health system when he himself was minister for health. His answer was to create the HSE with the object of pushing the problem from his desk to that of the HSE.
Eventually he fled that department and the next minister for health in that government told us that trolleys were “beds on wheels”. When we were not impressed, she then decided that the situation was a “national emergency” but did nothing else.
All this at a time when another minister in that government was telling us that we were taking in one billion euro in excess tax for which we had no use.
Now they want to persuade us that they are “competent” and “have learned from the mistakes”. Not their mistakes, mind, somebody else made them. In reality they have learned nothing but forgotten (or pretend to have forgotten) everything.
The only question remaining is how much have the Irish people learned and remembered.
A question that will be answered shortly on a ballot paper. – Yours, etc,
ANDREW DUFFY,
Ballinamore,
Co Leitrim.
Sir, – It is January and the annual A&E trolley crisis is in full swing. Despite the expenditure of many millions, there has been little improvement. The Minister of Health says there are no quick fixes and it will take some time to deal with the problem. Over the past decade we have had promises, pledges, multipoint plans, task forces, working groups, etc. At this stage would it be impertinent to suggest concentrating resources on one hospital? Once effective, and hopefully cost-effective, solutions have been identified, they could then be implemented throughout the hospital system. – Yours, etc,
AIDAN McCORMICK,
Clonskeagh,
Dublin 14.