Dear Editor, The Health Minister, Ms Harney, recently got irate at the suggestion that she was going to employ “yellow-pack” consultants on her brand new consultant contract. Indeed, the public, she continued, are being held to ransom by greedy consultants. What is good enough for consultants in the UK is good enough for consultants here, [...]
Colin Kerr says consultants are ill-advised to focus on new salaries and he advises the IMO and IHCA to start winning the media debate by pointing out that the health service is a mess At the time of going to press, it appears that the consultant contract talks are dead and buried. Minister for Health [...]
Dear Editor, I refer to a letter from Dr Colm Quigley published in Irish Medical Times on 6 April. It appears to me that a good majority of doctors have no interest in so-called competence assurance, feeling they do not need an outside academic, probably no longer in clinical practice, to tell them how they [...]
Dear Editor, As specialist doctors nearing the completion of our training we would like to express our deep disquiet at the Minister for Health’s and the HSE’s aggressive approach towards our profession. We are all on the threshold of entering public hospitals as fully trained consultants. We believe that we can change the world and [...]
The insistence of the Minister of Health and the Health Service Executive (HSE) in pressing ahead with introducing a new category of consultant into Irish hospitals means attention now focuses on who will occupy these posts. Although the issue of financial reward had not even been broached at the recent negotiations, the generous nature of [...]
Some were not happy with the choice of venue for the IMO AGM, but Killarney does make it easy for delegates, partners and children to all be included in the activities. I don’t believe the camaraderie exhibited in Killarney would happen if the event took place in one of the major cities, with people flitting [...]
Dear Editor, The decision on the new national children’s hospital should wait until after the election and Health Minister Mary Harney must scrap her plans to ram her proposal through by stealth. Minister Harney is trying to bypass the Oireachtas and ram through her proposal to set up a development board to oversee the establishment [...]
Colin Kerr says Minister for Health Mary Harney and her Government colleagues should learn from the mistakes they have made in the nurses’ dispute and come up with a plan Nobody told her it was going to be easy when Mary Harney announced her intention to succeed Micheál Martin as Minister for Health. But even [...]
Dear Editor, The Minister for Health has failed to take action on behalf of Mayo cancer patients who have to wait months for essential treatment. I asked Minister Harney to take urgent steps to ensure those patients could get Galway operating theatre slots for vital treatment to insert radioactive implants for their cancer. Some have [...]
Dear Editor, The Minister for Health’s “shotgun marriage” approach to the healthcare profession is duly noted. Conflict with the vast majority of serving healthcare professionals, which has been characterised by the utilisation of civil servants in a manner reminiscent of the sitcom Yes, Minister, and the creation of a “them and us” disunity between the [...]
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