Madam, – According to your report (“HSE chief to receive €70,000 euro bonus as it plans €1.2 billion cuts”, October 14th), the bonus is in recognition for work done in 2007 when “activity in many community and hospital services increased . . .”
In May 2004 our son, then 17 months old, suffered brainstem infarction after contracting meningitis. He has been left paralysed from the neck down and permanently on a ventilator. He is now a beautiful, bright six year-old, living a compromised yet happy and fulfilled life with his family.
However, we had to fight the HSE every inch of the way to get to this point. In fact we constantly feel threatened by the power this organisation wields, threatened that it may take away any of the funding that enables us to keep our precious little boy at home. In the past three-and-a-half years, since our son has been home, I have not sat at a meeting more than twice with the same person in a managerial position. For example at least three different people have held the position of assistant director of public health nursing. The lack of continuity and consistency in this organisation is appalling.
Our son cannot move or exercise his muscles himself, and, as he is on a ventilator, he suffers from life-threatening chest infections, yet there is no comprehensive community-based physiotherapy service. There are “no funds” for this service. I wonder could Prof Drumm’s bonus have funded this service for a year, or maybe two.
Each time we visit Our Lady’s Hospital for Sick Children in Crumlin – which is pretty often – I have to face the battle of getting a parking place within the hospital grounds. Something which is imperative considering the amount of equipment we carry.
It has got to the stage now where, each time we approach the hospital, a little voice from the back of the car intones “Mommy, I’m praying to Holy God that we get a parking place”; this from a little boy who is about to be jabbed for the umpteenth time for a vial of blood. It tells its own story that he is stressing about the parking rather than the painful medical procedure he is about to endure.
The list of our daily struggles in a badly run and mismanaged health service goes on and on.
This news about bonuses within the HSE makes me sick to my core. – Yours, etc,