Madam, - Mary Raftery's opinion of hospital consultants is as offensive as it is ill-informed (Opinion, March 16th). She offers no explanation as to why forcing consultants to work public-only is a "vital reform of the system".
As for public patients being "short-changed by consultants intent on making money from their private work", I am not aware of any consultants who do not work more hours than their current public contract demands, whether they also work privately or not. In what way does this short-change the public?
Ms Raftery describes Mary Harney's attempts to "face down" the consultants as though they are intent on wrecking the entire service, or are in some way responsible for the mess in which we find ourselves in. Ask any patient what the "greatest scandal of the health service" is, and they'll quickly point you in the direction of the emergency department trolley-jams.
Ms Harney seems quickly to have abandoned her (now unattainable) goal of easing the problems facing our emergency departments in favour of harassing the hard-working service providers. Isn't there an election next year?
Finally, with her sneering at the private health service, would Ms Raftery care to inform us whether she has private health insurance herself? - Yours, etc,
Dr. ALAN J. BRODERICK, (NCHD), Loreto Abbey, Rathfarnham, Dublin 14.
Madam, - When I read that farmers, fishermen and hospital consultants "need to be put in their place", as Mary Raftery advocated last Thursday, I have to remind myself that this is a democracy.
Sentiments such as putting people in their place belong to an aristocracy or monarchy, but not a democracy. Dismissing farmers' participation in the partnership process as mattering "not one jot", the fishermen as "lawless" and the hospital consultants' behaviour as being "one of the great scandals of the health service" seems facile and over the top.
None of these groups, while not without clout and certainly not without fault, is anywhere near the centre of the power structure. They are, consequently, easy targets when the real power brokers - ie, the Government, with access to millions of taxpayers' money, and the media, most of whose backers are equally not short of a shilling - want to fight a propaganda war.
Now that Mary Raftery has had a go at the easy targets I await her taking a similarly articulate potshot at some of the more powerful vested interests. - Yours, etc,
A. LEAVY, Shielmartin Drive, Sutton, Dublin 13.