Once again we face the nightmare of a winter wards crisis
THIS week, we have seen a parade of health chiefs before the Oireachtas Health Committee trying to justify funding overrun problems in the HSE.
The highest-paid civil servant in the country, Department of Health secretary general Robert Watt, was in typically robust form when he explained the €1bn excess, but it surely came as no surprise to him.
Regular readers of the Irish Mail on Sunday will know that, from the start, the 2023 HSE Service Plan was doomed to failure, with a potential €2bn overrun hidden in the fine print. This occasioned a dispute between the department and the HSE that led to board members of the latter resigning, rather than standing over what was published.
This week, we reveal the depth of concern over the HSE’s winter plan last year, and the feeling among some members of the board that hospital overcrowding was at a level that demanded the declaration of a national emergency.
This is noteworthy as we face into another winter when the underlying systems have not been fixed.
It leaves us as a country again facing the nightmare prospect of delayed elective surgeries and with hundreds of vulnerable patients a day left on trolleys in corridors.
Last January, the MoS revealed the high number of excess deaths that can be expected when such conditions prevail. This calls into question why the system is still built on the same foundation that has buckled under pressure, time and time again, over the past two decades.
The reality is that the health system and the politicians have factored an acceptable level of death into the dysfunction over which they preside.
As another flu season rolls in, and with resurgent Covid and other respiratory ailments still in the mix, election season is right around the corner too. It is possible that by the time winter 2024 comes around, there will have been two occasions to consult with the electorate on their feelings on this and other crises that are tragically endemic in our State.
TRAGIC KILLING CHALLENGES US ALL
THE tragic news emerging from Tullamore is somehow beyond normal comprehension – and yet worryingly familiar. In recent years, we have heard tell from abroad of events that defy understanding – and reveal the frightening speed at which a new world is emerging from a global culture that is now supercharged by the immensely powerful communication tools at society’s disposal. We have consoled ourselves by a naive belief that such occurrences will not happen here.
While the motivations behind the woman’s killing are as yet unknown, the fact that at the centre of the horror is a minor, sends a chill up the spine of parents right around the country.
It is easy for the community to despair. Such events happening in our midst ask questions of us all. It is up to all of us to not turn away, to look such tragedy in the eye, and seek to understand the incomprehensible and provide the support that only a truly caring society can to those most in need of assistance.
A family has been ripped apart and life will never return to any semblance of normality for them.
We can only offer sincere condolences as they navigate their grief in the challenging weeks, months and years ahead.