Sir, – I have on occasion availed of your letters page to criticise the complete lack of financial control in the HSE and the relevant government departments. A headline in a recent edition (“Minister to target €633 million in health savings”, News, March 31st) had me reaching for my pen to acknowledge the new and very welcome financial rigour in our public health system. There is, of course, a leap from the Minister targeting savings to the HSE delivering them. But it did seem to be a mildly encouraging straw in the wind.
My unaccustomed optimism did not survive contact with the first sentence in Martin Wall’s report. It reads: “The health service will have to make savings of €633 million if it is to stay within its (2025) budget”. In the real world, “targeted savings” would mean a plan for reduced expenditures. But in the fantasy financial world inhabited by HSE senior management, the term means nothing of the sort. The health budget for 2025 is €26.9 billion (it has more than doubled in 10 years) and three months into the year we are told that this record budget will be exceeded unless savings of €633 million are found.
We have seen this movie before. There is no prospect of cost savings. And we have come to learn that no health budget is big enough to avoid the need for a supplementary estimate later in the year. – Yours, etc,
PAT O’BRIEN,
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Dublin 6.
Sir, – I read that the HSE is looking at costs arising from GP access to the diagnostics initiative as part of cost-saving considerations.
These costs simply reflect the clinical need for these diagnostic tests such as ultrasound or MRI. Patients are entitled to – and expect – a degree of diagnostic accuracy that history and physical examination will not always allow, no matter how skilled or experienced the physician.
Access to investigations is a basic tenet of properly resourced modern primary care.
I broadly agree with saving on postage and moving to wind down private practice on public sites.
Patients show me the multiple letters they receive from the HSE asking if they want to remain on the waiting list.
Furthermore, thousands of patients on public waiting lists receive correspondence regarding referral to private hospitals in other jurisdictions to access treatments, funded by the State.
That is indeed a lot of postage stamps.
Finally, the HSE must recognise that it is illogical to suppose that any good might come from spreading the current precarious clinical staffing level in hospitals even more thinly across significantly more working hours. Implementing the five out of seven day plan requires more clinical staff in addition to intelligent rostering. – Yours, etc,
Dr MARIA MOY,
Lough Eske,
Co Donegal.
Regional airports
Sir, – James Ryan (Letters, April 4th) suggests hat the passenger cap at Dublin Airport should remain in place until such time as the industry launches more flights from the regions. Though a nice idea in theory, this simply will not work.
Airlines operate their aircraft wherever they feel they will get the best return from their investment. If they cannot expand in their preferred location, then they will choose somewhere else, and it probably won’t be in this country. A relatively recent example of this is Aer Lingus, which launched long-haul services out of Manchester in 2021.
The reality is that there’s no value in continuing to push regional airports in this country; we just don’t have the population for that. Instead, I’d like to see the powers that be focusing on improving transport links to Ireland’s only hub airport so that it is more easily accessed by those of us living outside the Pale. – Yours, etc,
RICHARD BANNISTER,
Kildare.
Children and gender ideology
Sir, – The letter from “Mammies for Trans Rights” (March 30th) cites the World Health Organisation’s reclassification of gender identity as a sign of progress. But the WHO has become increasingly ideological, promoting rights-based activism rather than evidence-based medicine. Its endorsement of traditional Chinese medicine, including remedies like rhino horn and bear bile, shows how far it has drifted from scientific credibility.
The letter claims gender-related distress is not a mental health disorder. Yet gender dysphoria is a well-established mental health condition, recognised in clinical literature and by health systems worldwide. Denying this reality doesn’t reduce stigma but rather it adds to it, by pretending sufferers are not in genuine psychological distress and by removing the therapeutic support they need.
And if, as they claim, gender distress is neither a mental nor a physical disorder, why are we offering irreversible medical treatments such as puberty blockers, cross-sex hormones and surgeries to children and young people? What exactly are we “treating” if there’s no acknowledged pathology?
The Cass Review in the UK makes clear that social transition, ie changing names, pronouns, presentation, etc, is not a neutral act. This is a novel and powerful psychosocial intervention that has no long-term research to support it. It can have lasting psychological and developmental consequences. It is profoundly unethical for adults to indulge such experimentation when children cannot give informed consent to the possible long-term outcomes.
The letter also ignores the impact on women and girls. Under the banner of “inclusion”, women are losing access to single-sex spaces, sports, and language. “People with a cervix” doesn’t include women, it erases them. When we can’t name women, we can’t defend our rights.
Schools are being told to affirm children’s identities, sometimes without parental consent and to treat biological sex as irrelevant. This is not safeguarding; it’s experimental social policy, and children are the test subjects.
To suggest that critics are driven by bigotry or profit is a lazy attempt to silence debate. Many of us are left-leaning, secular adults who believe in protecting children and safeguarding women’s rights.
We shouldn’t be afraid to ask questions. Indeed, failing to do so may result in irreversible harm to children. – Yours, etc,
SARAH HOLMES,
Media Spokesperson,
Genspect Ireland,
Dublin.
Funding housing
Sir, – There was significant investment in public housing in the 1930s and the 1950s. One of the main funding sources was local government bonds.
Given that personal net savings now amount to over €8 billion, is the issue of a new national housing bond not the perfect “green jersey” solution to the reported funding crisis which is negatively impacting housing development? – Yours, etc,
SHAY DUFFY,
Sutton,
Dublin 13.
Official residences
Sir, – There should be more public acceptance regarding the notion that a Taoiseach would as a matter of norm stay in an official residence (“Martin yet to stay at overnight residence”, News, April 4th).
From an organisational perspective, it would be more streamlined to base operations from such a residence and it is outdated in the modern political era not to follow the examples of so many other countries in this practice.
In Canada, as well as such a residence being in place, even the official leader of the Opposition has an official residence.
Such residences worldwide are used regularly for important soft diplomacy, where the former taoiseach Charles Haughey would have used his own private property Abbeville in Kinsealy in such a vein.
I fail to see why it is generally accepted that the Irish President resides within a considerable estate mansion while the idea of the executive leader of the government staying in a more modest property nearby seems to generate a palpable sense of resistance.
The entire realm of the availing of appropriate residences for both the Taoiseach and possibly offering similar resourcing to whoever the considered leader of the Opposition is at any given point in time should be more actively reviewed. – Yours, etc,
Cllr JOHN KENNEDY,
(Fine Gael),
Dún Laoghaire
Rathdown County Council Offices,
Dún Laoghaire,
Co Dublin.
