“Nurses can remove patients from beds ‘as trespassers’ using minimum force in order to free up acute beds for patients who need them.”

Sounds like a statement by President Elect Donal Trump’s new Secretary of Health.

Instead, it’s from a memo by the Irish Health Service Executive (withdrawn in the meantime) as reported today by RTÉ’s Health Correspondent Fergal Bowers.

There is a certain irony in what happened today: 27 years to the day after the world’s most famous wall came down in Berlin, a man was elected President of the USA who is best known for building a new one. 15 years after 9/11, the USA got an 11/9 to remember.

I think most of us will remember for a long time what we were doing this morning when we heard that Donald Trump got elected. I woke up with (almost) no voice, and stomach and head aches. I’m in bits, as they say. And it didn’t get better.

The ‘good old’ Pádraig was there really prominent today telling everybody who wanted to hear it this morning – and that was myself, his therapist, and his sister – that he really liked Trump, that it was great that he had won the elections, and that he would have voted for him had he been an American. The therapist decided Pádraig’s feet were too tired to press the switch properly – as therapists do when they think they are getting conflicting messages:) I think Pádraig was simply having a bit of a laugh, having everybody on, provoking us, questioning everything, especially the ‘obvious’, poking fun – as he confirmed when we asked him again in the evening (ppphhh!!!). It’s good to see he’s right here with us.

Nobody better than Trump to prove it!