According to the 'experts' the magic wand for the Irish health service is "centres of excellence". Brilliant really. Who could be against excellence? Except there's a catch. The downside of this miracle is that large numbers of existing critical health services (cancer, maternity, etc.) will be closed to be replaced a very small number of CoEs. Now according to the gurus we'll benefit overall as the new large top class centres will have much greater success rates ... when you get there. That's the 64m euro question that has been bugging this whole scheme. When asked (by our tame media) the gurus reply that the disadvantage of longer journeys for critical health care will be more than compensated by the greatly improved outcomes.
It's uncanny really. Utilitarianism 101. Overall utility maximised. Jeremy Bentham would be so happy. Except that there's one glitch that the gurus don't mention and our poodle journalists won't raise. This new system, if it is put in place as announced, should improve healthcare overall, but some citizens will gain and others will lose. The 1 million Irish citizens parked in and around Dublin will see a half dozen mediocre health services replaced by (say) three world-class facilities. Definitely a good deal. The 1/2 million citizens that live on the western seaboard away from a major city will see their one local (an hour's drive away) facility closed and will be facing 4 and 5 hour journeys to these new CoEs.
The current government and their buddies in the establishment are willing to let the peasants in the west of Ireland die so that the busy young workers of the Pale can improve their life expectancy.
So much for the Regional development strategy.
Incidentally (of course) replacing many small hospitals with a few giant facilities is a lot better for the career path of the pushy west-brit consultants that really control health ...
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