Maurice Neligan,who died on Friday, contributed a weekly column to this supplement for almost seven years. The following is a selection of extracts from his columns.
January 27th, 2004
His first column, on the state of the health service
The problems besetting our health service sadly are not new. Any reasonable person might have expected that after a period of unprecedented affluence, the infrastructure and delivery of our health services at all levels would leave us as a nation second to none in the delivery of healthcare. Instead, we have a shambles, with conflicting systems, public and private. We have problems in the delivery of primary care, of hospital care, both acute and long stay, and in just about every part of our service.
The subject is huge and complex but ultimately it boils down to one premise only: the right of a patient to see and be speedily treated by a doctor. This is the irrefutable bottom line . . . The political and administrative faculty should exist to facilitate and ensure the smooth, correct and efficient attainment of that goal.
July 27th, 2004
On his days as a medical student, training for operating theatre
Finally, someone would notice the huddled group of students. “Which of you is working for Mr X?” You would suddenly realise that you were in the firing line and grimly acknowledge your presence. “You will be needed to scrub up and assist.” A brief prayer – “O Jesus, let me not make a complete balls of this” – and on rubbery legs you took the next step, to be initiated into the mysteries of washing hands and forearms in a sterile fashion and then donning your surgical gown and rubber gloves.
. . . If you were unlucky, the operation would be over before you joined the fray and you became even more an object of ridicule and contempt. Otherwise, finally cleaned and dressed, like the turkey, you were propelled towards the action.
. . . In time, we became more comfortable and less maladroit and even, dare I say it, useful. The interest grew with the involvement. It was then that I knew I wanted to be a surgeon.
July 10th, 2007
On the death of his daughter Sara
“Dear Sara, I do want to write to you and about you, but as now my heart is too heavy and my eyes too full of tears. Your passing leaves a void in our hearts, which the most loving memories can fill only inadequately.
. . . With God’s help, the pain will lessen and we will be able to remember you as you were, a beautiful, caring, dignified and compassionate girl and woman who brought so much happiness into so many lives.
. . . Folk do move on, the strength coming for some from the unquenchable human spirit. For others it comes from faith and the promise of resurrection. We unreservedly believe that we shall meet Sara again in the sunlit uplands . . .
Sara, love, when I went through your papers and saw your miserable pay cheques as a fully qualified intensive care nurse, I made a promise to you that your old dad would fight this cynical inequality developing in our society. So I shall.
Back to Emily Dickinson and the lines I have quoted before, for us in family, for us remains:
“The sweeping of the Heart
And putting love away
We shall not want to use
again
Until eternity.”
January 13th, 2009
On the economy
Wake up and look around you. Where are the fruits of our pampering? Where are the schools, hospitals and basic infrastructure that should be the legacy of the halcyon days of such service? Ask yourselves, where did the money go? Ponder as to whether those elected to govern wisely should not have spent judiciously on the basics of our economy and heeded the right of our people to decent health and educational services and all that is ancillary to the care and succour of the most disadvantaged of our society. They demonstrably did not.
. . . These are grim times and the pity is that they need not have been so bad. We were very poorly led and we were shamefully complacent. It stretches credulity to assume that those who brought us here have the capacity to retrieve the situation. Daily, it becomes more obvious that they do not and public anger is growing. Time is not on our side.
July 27th, 2010
On changing his mind on the location for the national children’s hospital
When the Mater was selected as the site for the National Paediatric Hospital in 2006, I welcomed the decision and wrote about it in this column . . . I was asked recently to review my stance on the project. I did so and, in all honesty, I think my original position was wrong. I had unwittingly passed over many little problems. This wasn’t about me, or the convenience of my colleagues or prestigious and academic considerations. It was about the “little problems”, the sick children . . . I feel that neither the Mater nor the joint children’s hospitals may be best served by this proposed development on a geographically constrained site . . .
John Betjeman wrote in First and Last Loves: “Oh prams on concrete balconies, what will your children see.”
We can do better, and in view of the fact this National Children’s Hospital is about all the sick children of Ireland, not just Dublin, let’s look for a greenfield site, spacious and easy of access. In these days of Nama and sequestered land banks, such may be available.”
August 3rd, 2010
On enjoying the outdoors in Kerry
There is a long lane leading to the house and the brambles here have a nasty habit of growing. Seemingly, they can scratch the paintwork of passing cars. Secateurs in hand, I set out. It could have been worse.
On a beautiful morning in such a tranquil place, the work proceeded very slowly. There were too many distractions to concentrate on the job in hand.
There were butterflies, large and small white . . . There were dragonflies with helicopter-like facility of vertical flight. There were myriad swallows strafing the road as they snapped up insects on the wing.
These were ideal stimuli to make the worker lean on his spade and postpone the designated work.
Observing this joyous carnival of life and growth made progress very slow.
The HA finally appeared, noted that I had failed to deal with the problem adequately once again and, what was more, I had taken hours to achieve so little. All right, so I didn’t do a great job on the brambles, but I was at peace and had thoroughly enjoyed myself.
Another magic day raced away, as they do in this idyllic spot in Kerry.
