Sir, – I have difficulty accepting that hospital consultants are being seriously discommoded because they are bombarded with letters from politicians about their constituents' operations ("Centre turns away patients in urgent need of brain surgery", September 5th).
In this era of the word processor, the same letter should be sent to each politician, with each letter stating that the operation date was uncertain but that the operation would be performed as soon as possible according to clinical need.
The politicians need a reply that they can show the constituent in order to demonstrate that they have made the inquiry. The doctors’ secretaries could send out the letters without taking up the valuable time of the consultant, solving the problem with ease.
However, the worrying aspect of this is the notion that a politician should write to a doctor on a constituent’s behalf in the first place.
Is there any suggestion that a letter from a TD can speed up the treatment time of a patient? Are patients who do not ask their TD to write to the hospital being disadvantaged in any way?
Perhaps we need a statement from all political parties and Independent TDs setting out exactly what their letters hope to achieve. – Yours, etc,
AOIFE LORD,
Tankardstown,
Co Meath.