Madam, - Noel Whelan's calm and thoughtful column in your edition of November 10th was tarnished in its closing sentences by his misreading of the forces at play in the management of our health service.
Those at the frontline in healthcare are not the obstacles he claims them to be. The truth is that consultants and other medical personnel have been the driving forces for reform and for improving efficiency.
It is a regular tactic of the Taoiseach when defending his own Government's performance in this area to claim that consultants are the cause of the problem rather than part of the solution. It may take the sort of broad-ranging political initiative Mr Whelan suggests if we are to shake our political masters and the HSE into bringing this disgrace to a close.
Mr Whelan might like to ponder the following before shooting from the lip again:
Was it consultants, politicians or health managers who recommended developing centres of excellence for breast care in 2000?
Was it consultants, politicians or health managers who delayed the roll-out of Breastcheck for so many years?
Was it consultants, politicians or health managers who purchased a new CT scanner for Mallow Hospital and then failed to appoint the requisite staff to run it, leaving the machine sitting idle for nearly a year?
Is it consultants or health managers who insist that operations in some hospitals cannot start later than 3.30pm so that surgery will be finished by 5pm and nursing staff will not therefore receive overtime payments?
Was it consultants, politicians or health managers who demanded the introduction of MRI scanning to Ireland?
Was it consultants, politicians or health managers who ensured that it took a further nine years after Blackrock Clinic opened its private MRI scanner before the public sector got one?
I could cite many more examples where political and administrative inertia is blocking rather than improving our health services. Bland generalisations of blame as used by Mr Whelan and the Taoiseach succeed only in diverting attention from the real issues. - Yours, etc,
DONAL DUFFY, Assistant Secretary General, Irish Hospital Consultants Association, Heritage House, Dundrum, Dublin 14.