It's a mere two weeks into 2007 and the service that our country should wear with pride currently looks like a dog being wagged to the point of complete submission by a succession of very large, very powerful tails; the continuing Bupa saga; the appalling row over the new Euro500m children's hospital; the never ending failure to clinch a new consultants' contract; and in the end of it all, a health service that, despite massive investment still fails to deliver a first class equal point-ofentry service for all. We could add at least 20 more failures within the health service to this list but these are just the most recent crises to emerge in the past weeks.

When Mary Harney took over the Department of Health she promised significant changes to the structure and performance of the way our health service is run.

But while some of her decisions, which include the establishment of the HSE, carry an aura of decisiveness, there is growing unease that health is snowballing out of control.

The past week has seen an eruption of the bile contained in many of the ugliest sores which have been debilitating the health service for years. However - and not to continue the metaphor too far - there is a real feeling that unless a lot of these problems are lanced quickly and effectively, the entire system will be fatally infected as powerful interest groups wrest control.

The Bupa crisis needs a strong hand: the British company made extraordinary profits of 18% a year in the Irish market compared to 5-6% within their home British market.

Bupa needs to be told in no uncertain terms to get out if it doesn't want to play by the rules. Gambling with people's health insurance to retain competitive edge is totally unacceptable. Bupa's bona fides for Irish consumers are totally shot. Competitors such as Axa must be encouraged to step into the breach.

Harney must also end the row over the new children's hospital. The public simply doesn't believe that the board and staff of Crumlin hospital would be so cynical as to withdraw co-operation with the new children's super-hospital at the Mater because they want to protect their own power base.

Their efforts for the sick and dying children in Crumlin have been too generous and selfsacrificing to make this even thinkable.

Are the public naïve? Perhaps, but either the arguments for the Mater site are so compelling that any power-plays by vested interests can be outed, or they are doubtful, in which case there is a strong argument for an independent and public review.

The Crumlin boycott is truly extraordinary because it places a doubt over the future care of children who are being treated in that hospital. The public and parents need it sorted now.

Minister Harney must silence the doubters effectively with clear facts and arguments if this project is to go ahead.

Then there is the everyday service the public gets. This week we learned that routine smear tests are taking months to process - simply unacceptable.

In our pages today, we expose the appalling treatment of stroke victims, some of whom are condemned to far less fulfilling lives and actual physical and mental disability because the health service fails to provide. Unacceptable, Minister.

A&Es, while improving, are still places of bureaucracy and delay. Unacceptable, minister.

So who is running our Euro15bn health service? We report today that the minister and her three junior health ministers are directing more than two-thirds of the questions put to them in the Dáil to the HSE which then in 95% of cases refuses to answer the question.

When the HSE was set up, the clear demarcation was that the Department of Health would set policy, while the HSE would implement it. The department and the minister would remain The Boss.

Yet legitimate queries about health services which are being asked by TDs on behalf of their constituents in the most important forum in the land - the Dáil - are being fobbed off on a regular basis.

They are not, it seems, a matter for the Department of Health whose minister was, we all presumed, the political and budgetary mistress of all things medical - they are the concern of the HSE, which doesn't have to answer directly to the Dáil.

Unacceptable.