Health

Inspectors struggle with tobacco laws

An appeal from the environmental health profession for more inspectors to enforce tobacco legislation has been ignored by the Health Service Executive (HSE).

Security fears over shared campus for students and mental patients

Staff at St. Brendan's psychiatric hospital fear a plan to transform the 70-acre hospital site into a cross-community campus for the Dublin Institute of Technology (DIT) will have broader security implications. Plans have been made to re-house mental patients, ranging in age from 18 to 70, to the same site as the new DIT campus into what the Grangegorman Development Agency (GDA) has called “a cross-community synergy development”.

Harney's Broken Promises

Mary Harney chose to take on the Department of Health in October 2004 believing that only she could reform the Irish health services. Three and a half years on, all of her main promises on health are broken.

By Sara Burke

No Vision for Change in Mental Health Services

The shocking story of the HSE and it's misappropriation of Mental Health Funding.
By Sara Burke

The HSE is “misappropriating funds allocated to develop mental health services”, while government is stripping mental health services of their main assets – buildings and land. This is according to groups working in mental health.

 

The Health service: a catalogue of crises and failures

 

1. The two-tier health system

Suzie Long's early and unnecessary death put a public face on Ireland's unequal two-tier health system. Public patients wait significantly longer to access essential medical services than people who can afford to pay privately.
The 2001 health strategy promised “equitable services on the basis of need”. Six years on, there has been no change in how public patients access services – access is still determined by ability to pay, not need.

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