It may be the new year, but it’s old news as far as the obsolete and crumbling health service is concerned.
With the overcrowding crisis worse than ever, and not getting better any time soon, it seems that the HSE and its rather young and inexperienced helmsman are facing an uphill struggle.
Successive Governments have done nothing for the service, just like they have done nothing to palliate the housing crisis, or the mortgage arrears situation. Only thing previous a Government did with haste was arranging a bank bailout that hung a 64bn millstone around the Irish people.
Now, Minister for Foreign Affairs Charlie Flanagan has urged the HSE to ‘step up to the overcrowding crisis.’
This very morning, the INMO registered the chilling figure of 602 people on trolleys across the country. This is the second-highest number ever recorded.
Minister Flanagan added his two cents by saying: “I do think it beholds everybody in the health service, whether they’re GPs at primary care level, whether they’re at hospital level or indeed whether they’re at community care or nursing home level.
“That we have heads knocked together to ensure that we can provide a health service which our people are entitled to.”