Following on from
this thread
Please remain civil or posting privileges will be removed
Its been going on for years. Varadkar has questions to answer. It seems he has a special interest in health when it comes to leaking documentation to a friend but none when it comes to ongoing systemic issues.
When I became Taoiseach in 2017, I said that I had unfinished business in health. I meant it, and I still mean it. Among my priorities was to finish off some of the work I had left in the Department of Health
Ah now.
MM landed the best blow.
The champagne socialist she is was put back in her box when he said he and her had totally different upbringings.
He was raised far from Mary Lous leafy suburbs and private education opportunity.
So she asked why he continued with policies doing more damage to housing and he took a personal dig. That'll satisfy people alright.
Should have known it was someone getting in early in an attempt to control the narrative. Wonder where people are getting this from if it isn't on the news.
Well no,
She said he doesn’t understand people suffering.
He said he would have a lot more understanding given his past compared to hers.
Thats fair, but he didn't put it like that. I'm sure the zinger will be great comfort to people.
So the conclusion is he knows people are suffering but continues to make it worse.
Was on the news at lunch, the Ray darcy show and drive time. You know, all the underground media on the dark web.
'mom and pop landlords'
Darragh O'Brien is such a fool.
They'll say anything to justify their crisis. MM talking about relying on more investment from hedge funds, cuckoo etc. Like they are doing us a favour. Gombeenism.
A MM and Mary Lou spat is really nothing new at all, hardly worth reporting on unless you imagine this is the pinnacle of Irish politics. Housing is the only thing that SF have to get themselves into the minds of voters. While absolutely nobody wants the plan to fail, they do want it to be just inadequate enough to be able to claim that electing SF will fix it.
And yet despite all the bluster we're close to boom time levels of building.
The fact is that decades of FF/FG mismanagement and waste in our health system resulted in the severity of the restrictions imposed during Covid.
Our health system was struggling to cope every winter even before Covid hit. The lack of political will to improve our health system will be their legacy.
The way the construction industry is gearing up, the number of projects in development, the housing situation may have improved dramatically by the time of the election in 2025. What will the government detractors have left?
It's not just a political issue, it's also how it's set up with massive deficits in primary care and on exit of the system. Bed numbers are a huge problem but hospitals have done themselves no favours by doing a Béal Bocht every winter while singularly failing to recoup all that private insurance money owed.
I don't think that it is political will, it is more that the HSE hasn't spent the money it has been allocated wisely. We have one of the highest (if not the highest) health spends in the world based on our population profile, and we do not get value for it. Paul Reid is an interesting appointment in that he is an outsider and is not a medical professional. It is a different direction for the leadership of the HSE and let's hope it works.
We need a different approach. The problem for the government is any other approach makes less money for hedge and cuckoo funds.
Spending our money on leasing and buying might increase stock but it won't solve the problems for renters and buyers. Prices will continue to rise and the tax payer will be picking up the slack.
I see lack of tradesmen isn't a problem all of a sudden. Chancers.
.
Trolley numbers are on the way back up. Once again they missed or had no interest in changing the way we do business when the opportunity presented itself.
Throw money at the victims, say 'lessons learned'.
It was political will or lack thereof. A succession of useless health ministers too. You know them, we all do.
This is an INMO press release in November 2019, 2 months before Covid hit.
2019 breaks record for most patients on trolleys – and it’s not even December (inmo.ie)
2019 has seen the highest number of patients on trolleys in any year since records began – despite it still being November.
The INMO is calling for extra staffing and an increase in hospital, homecare, and community capacity to deal with the problem.
The union has invoked healt and safety laws for staff, writing to the Health and Safety Authority and HIQA, seeking their intervention.
“Winter has only just begun and the record is already broken. These statistics are the hallmark of a wildly bureaucratic health service, which is failing staff and patients alike.
“We take no pleasure in having to record these figures for a decade and a half. We know the problem, but we also know the solutions: extra beds in hospitals, safe staffing levels, and more step-down and community care outside of the hospital.
“No other developed country faces anything close to this trolley problem. It can be solved, but a strong political agenda to drive change is needed.
“The INMO has written to the health and safety authorities this week to try force a change from the employers. Hospitals should be a place of safety and care – not danger.”
Yeah, but this not new nor a genius insight by the INMO. Every HSE report for the last decade or more has said the same thing. The INMO have their own vested interests in this, like all the other stakeholders. They are great at calling for things and not always supportive of how they might be implemented.
We have one of the highest ratios of nurses to hospital beds in the world, there is something wrong with that operational issue, which has nothing to do with any health minister, useless or not.
We shall see. Of course there will always be a cohort of people who want the free 4-bed semi in the suburbs with a garden big enough for a trampoline - they won't ever be satisfied, but the bulk of the problem is solvable.
Callan's big red wheelie bin
And homeless people dying on the street.
We should not dismiss the working taxpayer to favour private investors over some scrounger of the week story.
More of the same will not solve the bulk of the problem it creates. There's over ten years of hard stats available to support that.
Building is cheaper and we aren't doing it in any meaningful numbers. We were told by apologists there were not enough workers. Turns out there is if the project suits the private investors.
Has Coveney decided to make a complete fool of himself every week now?
Oh how his star has fallen. Completely and utterly found out. Dishonest and untrustworthy. Cultural I suppose. I wonder what his next ministry will be.
Yea quite shocked at how much a spoofer Coveney is.
He can't hide behind brexit anymore. The man lacks a personality and now any integrity.
Charlie Flanagan will get to the bottom of it.....gas. Champagne but no party. I usually pop open the bubbly on a tea break :)
He completely undermined the chief of staff yesterday and had to apologise for it today in the Dail.
Mistake after mistake.
A pair of chancers.
The Chairman of the Oireachtas Finance Committee, John McGuinness, has described as "outrageous" a trip by Secretary General of the Department of Health Robert Watt and Minister for Health Stephen Donnelly to attend the Dubai 2020 expo.
Mr McGuinness said it was "not the business" of Mr Watt and Mr Donnelly to be at the event.
Another 'lessons learned' I imagine.
These people do as they like and their coalition aiding and abetting friends do nothing.
It would have more force if it weren't serial crank McGuinness who's been offering up opinions like this since the 90s! He's the FF equivalent of John Deasy!
Lame response. It was the lack of political will. The INMO link I showed you had detailed trolley metrics which showed that capacity was and remains an issue.
Did you think the nurses put people on trolleys in A&E corridors for the hell of it? Do you think there were beds available elsewhere? Ah stop.
FF and FG created the mess and refused to acknowledge or fix it. That's their legacy.
I know for a fact that below happened. They did the same for a Brian Cowen walkthru in UCHG a few years earlier
Hospital denies ‘hiding’ patients on trolleys for Taoiseach’s visit (irishtimes.com)
Hospital denies ‘hiding’ patients on trolleys for Taoiseach’s visit
Saolta University Health Care Group has denied that patients on trolleys in University Hospital Galway’s emergency department were “hidden” for the visit of Taoiseach Leo Varadkar last week.
According to figures from the Irish Nurses and Midwives Organisation (INMO), there were 42 patients on trolleys on Tuesday, 58 on Wednesday, but just 26 on Thursday for Mr Varadkar’s visit. The figure rose again to 36 on Friday.
Independent TD Catherine Connolly, who was at the hospital on Thursday, said it was “a miracle” that the numbers dropped for Mr Varadkar’s visit.
“I walked through the hospital on Thursday, and I noticed that it was quiet,” she told RTÉ Raidió na Gaeltachta. “I got calls then afterwards, to tell me that it was all a pretence, that there were patients there but that they had been hidden.
INMO spokeswoman Anne Burke said “great efforts” were made to get patients off trolleys, but added she was “bemused” at the sudden reduction in numbers.
Criminal behaviour really. Leo didn't need the FG blinkers.
