“Of a very serious nature?”
The protocols and safeguards for dealing with the challenge of Covid-19 should apply fairly across all sectors of society. There should be logic, coherence and consistency in both their formulation and application. That should be obvious but of course prejudice blinds and leads to anomalies and the singling out of certain groups for specified additional […]
As we all know, the impact of Covid-19 on the delivery of health services in the State has been catastrophic. We also know that waiting lists across nearly all medical specialties have increased significantly and that it will be years before we can finally determine the real magnitude of the crisis that has been […]
If you are one of the ‘too Irish’ citizens of this “ethnostate” then perhaps you might do well to give the Irish National Integration Conference a miss. It is running all week from Monday to Thursday and the organisers in the Immigrant Council of Ireland have been kind enough to place the proceedings on their site if […]
Timmy Dooley, who signed off on the FF policy document on future funding of broadcasting, print and digital media, told me in conversation last week that taxpayer money would not be made available to “little organs of hate”. He would not be drawn on the Irish media outlets he had in mind. It raises a great […]
A democracy’s fortitude and constitutional structures can only be judged by their performance through times of strain – times such as when there is no government in place or where a pandemic rages. We are in such a time now, and the rot within the democratic processes and the institutions of this country are plain […]
The cost to the HSE of reimbursing medicines and drug treatments now stands at about €2.5 billion annually. By way of contrast; back in 2014 the annual bill was about €1.8 billion. A large proportion of our present costs are routinely attributed to the growing population of older persons. But this is, at best, only […]
Statistical evidence has played a central role in our society’s response to Covid-19. We gather and publish data on so many aspects of this epidemic – the number of deaths, the number of cases, the number of tests, the number of intensive care units available, the recovery rates among hospital admissions, the number of clusters […]