Health

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

Election stunt results in the purchase of expensive equipment, which now cannot be used because of recruitment ban and mismanagement

Despite government promises it would end, children seeking psychiatric care are still regularly being accommodated in adult institutions

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”.

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

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.

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.

The acting PD leader has failed by every measure of the government's own health strategy
By Sara Burke

About 100 times more people die because of a murderous political system than die of murders
By Vincent Browne

Poor people die far younger of all the major diseases because of deprivation
By Vincent Browne