Letter: Taoiseach's comments during Mayo visit lauded incompetence within health services
Sir,
Few politicians would have the gaul to stand meters from a facility where patients linger on trolleys and chairs for endless hours daily waiting for diagnosis and treatment and accuse the same patients of being "overly negative" about their experience.
I have had the misfortune of experiencing the overcrowding at the emergency department of Mayo University Hospital myself several times in recent weeks.
I saw corridors and alcoves and doorways crammed with people on trolleys and chairs, their loved ones standing, or perching where they could, their belonging hanging from whatever hook they could find.
Sick, miserable and in many cases forced to endure days of it.
The staff, far to few in number, rushing around, endlessly busy, sometimes frantic.
The scene evocative of a disaster response in a developing country before the Red Cross arrive.
The overcrowding in our emergency departments did not suddenly pop out of thin air.
Like all of the crises in the country it has happened because of policies which have been implemented over decades.
Policies which have included starving the HSE of funds and staff.
Guiding the country through those decades have been Fine Gael or Fianna Fáil governments.
Now, as ordinary people are thrown against the coalface of government policy, we are told by our Taoiseach that we are "overly negative" when describing our own experiences.
Experiences which will not, of course, be endured by the political class or those with funds enough to avoid the public health system.
To be part of a government which oversaw the worsening situation in our hospitals and then to use that situation at crisis point as a platform for electioneering takes a staggering level of arrogance.
What we saw in Castlebar this week was nothing short of a celebration of that arrogance and a lauding of incompetence and indifference which had to be seen to be believed, much like the situation the emergency department at Mayo University Hospital
Yours truly,
Jean Cross,
Knockadoona,
Ballinrobe,
Co. Mayo