Appalled at the style and timing of reporting of Brian Lenihan’s illness by TV3 as well as contribution to the report by St Vincent’s Prof John Crown. Halligan has all the sensitivity of a hawk-eyed, coiffered gravedigger despite pointing out how TV3 spared the Lenihan family Christmas. Bleeding hearts, I am sure.
Wishes to the Lenihan family this Christmas. I hope they will be given space on this.
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Update: If you’d like to show you support of Brian Lenihan in a passive way, you can add the Politics Aside, We Wish Brian Lenihan Well page on Facebook.
I was saddened to hear from TV3 on St. Stephen’s Day of Minister Lenihan’s illness. They informed me that they were going to report that he had pancreas cancer and asked me to speak about this disease. I was not asked and would have refused to discuss the specifics of the Minister’s health, or the health of any other individual. Pancreas cancer however is an important public health issue in this country, and kills 400 of our fellow citizens annually. Tragically, recent data suggest that the majority do not have access to appropriate treatment. Others who depend on our waiting list afflicted public hospital system have dreadfully delayed diagnoses.
I wish the Minister the very best in his treatment. I also hope that the increased public attention to this illness forces our politicians to address those deficiencies, which are the real pancreas cancer scandal in Ireland.
Mr Crown. This was not the time to make a political issue of an individual’s private trauma. Mr Lenihan is of course a public figure but he is entitled, as any human being is, to be allowed a decent timeframe to firstly come to terms with this horrific diagnosis himself and then to discuss this with his family in a dignified and calm manner without having TV3 and Ursula Halligan snapping at his heels. Do you think he needed such a public announcement so soon after getting the diagnosis himself? I was very disappointed to see you participate in this fiasco as I have great respect for you. Indeed, I attended a talk you gave in Beaumont Hospital on breast cancer a few years ago and I found it very helpful. I am not a Fianna Fail supporter, just somebody who has experienced the dreadful loss of two much loved sisters from cancer and who empathises with this poor man’s tragedy.
Brian Lenihan is a citizen but also a powerful government minister. It is appropriate to utter two responses regarding his illness as John Crown has done – one concerning the private citizen, the other regarding the man who performs a public role which impacts on a daily basis on the lives of other ‘equal’ citizens. I too hope that Citizen Lenihan makes a complete recovery, but like John Crown I will not ignore the fact that Minister Lenihan has been actively involved in creating a two-tier health system which condemns other ‘equal’ citizens to suffering and premature death. Institutionalized inequity is both anti-republican and anti-social – indeed it is inhuman. This is indeed an appropriate time to demonstrate how far we have moved from the notion of ‘the happiness and prosperity of all of its citizens’ which underpins what the Republic is supposed to be. It would be a worthy gesture on Citizen Lenihan’s part if he was to walk in the front door of his hospital as a public patient and in the course of his hoped-for recovery to learn the error of his political ways.