Health Service Chaos Must Be Tackled

I am once again today calling on Minister Varadkar and the HSE to take seriously the massive problems facing our health service before the situation becomes so chaotic that it will be totally out of control. We have almost 70,000 people on waiting lists for treatment, we have an ambulance service where the staff are stretched to the limit because of a lack of resources, we have record numbers on hospital trolleys at our A and E departments, we have a massive shortage of radiologists and radiographers and other consultants and we also have a chronic lack of GP’s in some rural areas. There are countless more problems too and the news that there has been a 30% increase in the number of top administrators in the HSE since 2012 is the last straw as far as I am concerned. The HSE seems to think that hiring highly paid administrators is more important than hiring frontline staff while the services on the ground are falling apart and patients are suffering. This beggars belief, and as far as I can see the situation on the ground is already almost unmanageable. Efforts at reforming the health service over the years have fallen dismally short. Minister Varadkar is constantly telling us how he is making great progress. If he wants a lasting legacy he has to rein in the HSE once and for all get his priorities right. It is the patients and the public who matter and not the interests of administrators and their big salaries. We need a fundamental change of thinking with regard to health care in this country and it has to start now. Making announcements and having photo calls about health service reform is a complete waste of time. It has happened time and time again over the years. The time for real and decisive action is long gone.