Galway In Days Gone By

1919

Doctors’ fees

Mr. P. Claffey presided at the weekly meeting of the Ballinasloe Board of Guardians held on Saturday. There also attended: Messrs. T.J. Dolan, M. Loughnane, M.N. Noctor, M. Cahill, and M.P. Kelly.

Medical Officers of the Union wrote asking for fifty per cent. increase in their fees for temporary duty.

Mr. Ryan he saw the Doctors’ Union had decided to charge £10 10s. for union and dispensary work. He considered the doctors’ demand reasonable.

Mr. Loughnane: What is the use of guardians coming in here at all if the officials are to dictate to them?

Mr. Ryan: When these doctors join the Union they will have to get bigger fees. The demand is reasonable.

Mr. Loughnane: I’m sure it is unreasonable. The board treated its medical officers not alone generous but liberal. – Mr. Ryan: I saw it in Athlone.

Mr. Loughnane: We don’t want to hear about Athlone.

Mr. Ryan: You must listen to reason. Do you see anything now for the same price as four years ago?

Mr. Loughnane: Yes and less.

Mr. Mitchell: If the doctors join the Union they will have to get more.

Mr. Loughnane: There is nothing threatened on us but Unions. It is very hard on the ratepayers to meet all. Let us stick to our original decision.

Mr. Ryan: I propose we put it on the agenda for next meeting.

Chairman: When it came up here before, I voted for £5 5s. per week, but there is no use in making laws one day and breaking them another.

Mr. Loughnane: They have their private practice, and very few red tickets I ever got. – Mr Ryan: You cannot expect a man to live on what he had four or five years ago.

– It was decided to consider the matter on that day fortnight.

Improved service

We learn that demobilisation of the various Army and Navy and auxiliary services has enabled the Post Office (in England) to introduce a much more efficient service.

We know that the railways and post offices in Ireland, under the control of a foreign State, are still working with a war-time shortage of staff and lack of efficiency.

Is it not high time that every public board and corporate authority in the country started senselessly to hammer at the doors of the powers that be in order to bring about the reintroduction of public services that would enable business to be conducted with some degree of despatch and that would once more rescue Irish provincial centres from the isolation in which they were placed under war-time conditions?

For more, read this week’s Connacht Tribune.

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