The PDS, healthcare and Louis XIV

One of the stranger aspects of the woeful Children's Hospital saga is that the minister currently responsible for our health and our children comes from a political party whose core values include minimal government and maximum transparency. The ruthless unilateralism with which this deeply flawed project has been rammed through by a secret ‘task force', (consisting entirely of servants of the HSE and the department, answerable only to their czar), makes the totalitarian statism of the late Louis XIV of France, (“L'état c'est moi!”), look like Hamletic anarchism.

But maybe I am being naïve. At the end of the day, will we wake up to find that this, by now, more than €500m bonanza of our children's hospital care has been franchised out for private profit, like ice cream or fried chicken, to a foreign commercial enterprise?

Does Halliburton do health-care?

Maurice O'Connell
Tralee, Co Kerry