Sir, – By the end of 2013 the Children’s Medical and Research Foundation, an independent voluntary charity, will have made grants totalling about €17 million for the period 2011-2013 to Our Lady’s Children’s Hospital, Crumlin. We rely totally on the generosity of the donating public, who have shown magnificent support to the cause for almost 50 years.
I wish to state unambiguously that not one cent of this has gone to pay top-ups or any salaries in the hospital.
We are dedicated to helping sick children, and their families, through the provision of funding for improvements to hospital infrastructure such as the new Children’s Heart Centre, the new Cancer Ward (St John’s), equipment and patient/parent well-being , and through supporting critical paediatric research at the National Children’s Research Centre (its grants also amount to €17 million over 2011-2013).
The point that has been lost in this controversy is our sick children. Crumlin hospital cares for the country’s most seriously-ill young patients. These children are still sick and we do them no service by potentially putting at risk the fundraising that is needed to upgrade and improve what are wholly inadequate and inappropriate conditions in some parts of Crumlin hospital, through any suggestion that fundraised income is funding salary top-ups, or by our donors deciding to stop donating to our programmes in protest. This is not to dismiss the debate, but we need to ensure, above all else, that some of the country’s most vulnerable citizens – the patients at Our Lady’s Children’s Hospital, Crumlin – do not suffer as a result of the decisions of grown-ups.
Don’t punish sick kids. – Yours, etc,
JOE QUINSEY,
Chief Executive,
Children’s Medical &
Research Foundation,
Our Lady’s Children’s
Hospital,Crumlin, Dublin 12.
Sir, – I can clearly remember my first day in the Post & Telegraphs. The new entrants assembled in a room heated only by a turf fire, in Exchange Court. Heralding our arrival into State employment, an cigire produced a lot of documents for signing. Among them, one which carried a “sanction” of dismissal, was a commitment not to hold down any other paid employment – I was glad to make it.
So many years and so much of taxpayers’ money later, we discover that such commitments did not extend to all.
Now we discover that government employees are receiving “secret payments” – “top –ups”. How does that happen?
If we have learned enough but accomplished nothing, we have discovered that some animals don’t change their spots. – Yours, etc,
ROY STOKES,
Limekiln Park, Dublin 12.