Sir, – Your headline "Key health providers could face insolvency on pensions" (News, September 17th) highlights the arrangement where voluntary hospitals, which are privately run institutions, are funded by the State but are neither owned nor controlled by it.
A recent example of the ludicrousness of this arrangement was the case of the National Maternity Hospital, which, using funds allocated to it by the Minister for Health, went to court to oppose the Minister’s decision to conduct an inquiry into its affairs, resulting in the Minister paying the legal costs of both defendant and plaintiff in the case. – Yours, etc,
MARY MORRISSEY,
Castletownbere,
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Co Cork.