The unacceptably long hospital waiting lists are once more in the limelight. The problem is a complex one and is not helped by unrealistic pronouncements coming from whatever source or level, Ministerial to man-in-the-street .

My colleague Dr Francis Saliba (January 20) is evidently correct to say that managing a waiting list for operations is best left to the surgeon concerned, who is in the best position to assess the urgency of a surgical procedure on a patient he has seen, listened to, investigated and diagnosed.

Behind every person put on the waiting list is a long story, of symptoms suffered, signs developed, investigations undertaken and diagnosis arrived at. It is a journey beset with personal and family apprehension and expectation. No collection of qualified lay managers can better understand all this than the surgeon and his team, that are involved.

At the same time good management of a waiting list requires a conscientious consultant with a fair sense of public service capable of distinguishing his or her own private interests from that of the community at large and who takes pride in his profession's ability to serve the ordinary public at the highest level. For one reason or another, being human, we occasionally fall short of this ideal.

Good management of waiting lists also requires adequate human and material resources. It is here that Ministers come in; here that a Minister should put his money where his mouth is. If he cannot do this he should withdraw his remarks, or make way for someone else. That is the honest way forward.

Our administration at Mater Dei Hospital is led by a medical superintendent. It should cause some worry in every citizen, and particularly in the minister concerned, that our medical superintendent can, cool as a cucumber, state that he cannot provide the statistical information requested related to certain waiting lists because the consultant concerned is reluctant to give them.

Something is rotten here, in the State of Denmark.

If the country does not have the resources to meet the needs of our ageing population, we should stop boasting of a state-of -the-art general hospital, of a completely free public health service, of standards of excellence in this and that by this and that year.

I believe the resources and especially the human resources are there, and greater than we think. We only have to find them and nurture them; we also have to identify and neutralise those individuals, however well connected, lacking in good will, who regard their own private interests paramount.

And we have to face our challenges openly and honestly without recourse to unjustifiable self-aggrandisement. And if we need to look into the possibility of introducing some health charges, so be it.