Mary "Michael Howard" Harney

They say imatation is the sincerist form of flattery. Well if this is true then Ms Harney is certainly laying the compliments on Mr Howard quiet thickly with her "MEAT factories are cleaner than some of our hospitals" speech in the dail yesterday. This is simular to Howards Matron drive which peaked with the washing of the hands scandel . So what is Mary's solution to the fact that as she said "she had visited meat factories and food processing concerns and found them to be cleaner than some hospitals." Now she has a point when she says

I am not happy with the standard of hygiene in hospitals and it is one of the first things I asked the new national hospitals office to deal with. I am determined that our hospitals are run to the highest possible standards, There is no excuse for dirt especially when huge money is being spent on cleaning programmes involving both in-house cleaning and outside contracts

but still it seems to me that all this is really only a publisity stunt . THe health ministery has always been a poisin callace and has damaged the reputation of many a good minister. It is riddled with problams with no easy solution. This however seems to be the same as Howard ie away to make an issue out of something that makes a great sound bite and looks like Ms Harney is strong on health. Hygiene is an inportant issue in hosipdeals but it is far from the greatest problam affecting the health service in Ireland. She has also come out with a new spending amount that is going to be invested by the HSE But again to justify it she compares it to the poor spending by Blair

"Our overall health capital budget this year is about €146 per person. This is nearly 60 per cent higher than the UK, for example, which will invest about €92 per person."

This again is Michael Howard talk selling a scheme by saying its better then theres. The question is will this health thing work are will mary go the way of michael and a new face takes the Pd throne. (2 guesses who that will be )