How is it after six years of Mary Harney as health minister and so called 'reform', the HSE West is scrambling around for €50 million of cuts? By Sara Burke.
Mary Harney came into the Department of Health in September 2004 just as the health boards were abolished and the HSE was set up. The rationale for establishing the HSE was to remove political influence and provide unified, quality health and social care across the country.
An estimated 1,500 people protested outside Leinster House today against planned Government spending cuts. The march, organised by the Irish Congress of Trade Unions (ICTU), was supported by the Labour Party, Sinn Féin, People Before Profit, the Socialist Party, and the Right to Work campaign among others. By Alison Spillane.
The three choices we have on food ethics, outlined by Joseph Mahon.
Eating doesn't usually give us cause for moral concern; stealing, lying, and hurting people all do. Other practices, such as capital punishment, abortion, euthanasia and war are morally suspect, and we argue endlessly about their correct moral status. But eating, as Peter Singer and Jim Mason observe in their book The Way We Eat:Why Our Food Choices Matter [ Rodale, 2006 ], "is generally seen quite differently. Try to think of a politician whose prospects have been damaged by what he or she eats."1
To reconfigure or not – that is the question. "Reconfiguration" is HSE-speak for changing the roles of local hospitals or closing down certain hospital services. By Sara Burke.
The reconfiguration quandary is not a new one. In 1936, 1968 and 2003, government-commissioned reports recommended the rationalising of hospitals, as there were too many hospitals providing poor quality care to too few people.
On 23 September last, the great and the good of Irish healthcare gathered to launch a new Patient Safety First initiative. Is this another puff launch or can it make a real difference to safe patient care? By Sara Burke.
First let's look at our very poor track record in patient safety. High profile cases that come to mind are:
Why does the Irish health system incentivise sickness rather than well-being? In ancient China, people used to pay doctors for their health, not their sickness, or so the yarn goes. Does it make sense to reward doctors for the treatment of the sick? Should keeping people well not be the main incentive in any health system? By Sara Burke.
This is the foundation of public health: healthy citizens make up better societies and there are individual, collective and societal measures that can make people live longer, better, healthier lives.
A policy document launched on Thursday by the Irish Penal Reform Trust (IPRT), Barnardos, and IAYPIC (Irish Association of Young People in Care) called on the government to shift its focus in tackling crime from investment in the prison system to prevention and early intervention strategies which would make more economic and social sense. By Alison Spillane.
It may take the country three to five budgets to “get back to normal”, a Green Party Senator said yesterday. In the meantime, the welfare state faces serious challenges.
Financial turmoil and economic slowdown will continue to exert a great deal of pressure on public social expenditures, a conference heard yesterday. In his presentation on the future of the welfare state, Prof. Tony Fahey of UCD also cited long-term factors such as an ageing population and high levels of unemployment as difficulties facing the welfare state.
For over forty years the Northern Irish writer Sam Hanna Bell bravely tried to use Ulster’s history and culture as a means of bringing it’s people together, as this selection of his superior non-fiction shows. By Edward O’Hare
The most complete version yet of Fritz Lang's sci-fi classic is not to be missed. By Clare Lanigan.
For decades the only version available of Fritz Lang's 1927 silent masterpiece 'Metropolis' was a cadavre exquis made up of what footage survived after American distributors cut nearly an hour from the original edit and the lost scenes were left to rot in various warehouses.