Madam, - It is scandalous that the Western Health Board has been sitting on a surplus of funds to the tune of €15 million while, at the same time, many vital services were being kept perilously short of money.
Galway now has an €80 million radiotherapy unit standing ready, but with no staff to run it. We have an ambulance service which has vehicles constantly breaking down through old age. And we have a decompression chamber at University College Hospital which is in urgent need of replacement.
The way in which health boards in this State have had money doled out from the Department of Health and Children, and, it appears, have just been told to get on with it, is a shambles.
I am so glad that this over-politicised, inept and over-managed health board system is to be broken up, and health services are to be managed centrally. This is a decision that has been billions of wasted pounds, and thirty years too late, in coming. - Yours etc,.
DERRICK HAMBLETON, Kingston, Galway.