Martin clears the air, but the sick and elderly still feel coalition chill

THE Minister for Health has given us a smoking ban. The Tánaiste wants to look after elderly people.

The minister for social welfare is reviewing the cuts in widows' entitlements. Isn't God in his heaven? Isn't everything right with the world? Yeah, right.

But let's start with credit where it's due. Well done on the smoking ban, Minister Martin. There's been a lot of opposition, it has required steady resolve, and it will do a lot of good.

But that resolve has to be applied elsewhere. Now that we have seen that this minister can make a decision, it's time he made a few more.

He presides over a health service that is characterised by queues of sick people, hospital beds waiting to be opened, consultants' reports waiting to be implemented. Above all it is characterised by the perception of a service that is becoming more remote as it becomes more expensive. Anyone with recent experience of the Irish health service reports the same feeling, that it just doesn't work any more.

Micheál Martin may have carved out a niche for himself in history as the best anti-smoking minister. If he doesn't want to be remembered as the worst patients' minister, he needs to apply the same resolve to their needs as he has to getting this ban into place.

I don't know what the PDs want to be remembered as. They can certainly be breathtaking. I nearly fell out of my chair over the weekend when I heard Mary Harney announcing that once the SSIA accounts have reached maturity, the Government should divert the €500 million it pays in interest on the SSIAs into services for elderly people.

First of all, would it not have been more socially responsible for the Government to have regard to the needs of elderly people before it set up the SSIAs, one of the most expensive election gimmicks in the history of Irish politics? The billions we (the taxpayers) will pour into the pockets of people with disposable income over the years of operation of the SSIAs won't create one extra job or solve one social or economic problem.

They were designed for one purpose and one purpose only to help get this awful government re-elected. If that money, or even a fraction of it, had been put into services for vulnerable people, including the elderly, we would have made huge progress in many areas over the last three years

It only goes to show that we could have afforded to make that progress, but chose to spend the money on a gimmick instead.

In any event, isn't this the same Tánaiste who said, only in January last, that families should contribute to the cost of keeping their older relatives in retirement homes. "Is it fair," the Tánaiste asked, "that people require the state to pick up the bill, and then they get the benefits when people die?"

I know that when she was taken up on the matter, she immediately said she was being quoted out of context. She was only trying to start a debate, her spokespeople said. Some debate from questioning the fairness of the state paying for retirement facilities to demanding that the state pay half a billion more, in just three months.

And what of the review of the cuts in widows' entitlements? The Government has set its face against such a review since the cuts were first highlighted by Labour's Willie Penrose, as part of the savage sixteen social welfare cuts. These cuts were actually announced last November, as part of the book of estimates. They have been highlighted a number of times since, in Dáil debates and elsewhere, and the Minister for Social Welfare, Mary Coughlan, has shown not the slightest inclination to change her mind. And what's more, the Tánaiste never indicated before now that she had any regrets over the cuts involved.

What happened? Joe Duffy happened, that's what. As the widows' cuts began to take effect, Liveline took up the cause, and ran a thoroughly effective campaign, highlighting not only the injustice involved, but also the mean-spirited and petty nature of the cuts. Suddenly the Tánaiste discovered the need for review. But where members of this Government are concerned, there is a direct correlation between social conscience and media and other pressure.

Fair play to the widows and their organisations they campaigned and lobbied hard to secure the change they are entitled to. They filled the public gallery on the two nights of debate in the Dáil on the Labour party's private member's motion on the subject, and made life very uncomfortable for any Fianna Fáil deputies they met. By the time the debate was over, even though the FF and PD deputies all voted to support the minister, the message was clear this mean cut had to go.

Who is going to campaign and lobby for the other people affected by these mean and miserable social welfare cuts? The widows found a voice, but will anyone speak up for the lone parents, or for the people on supplementary welfare with special dietary needs, or for people on tiny incomes who have become saddled with debt? These were among the groups of people immediately affected by the cuts when they were announced, and they remain affected by the hard-faced and hard-hearted approach of this Government.

So when Mary Harney says that something should be reviewed, you can usually rely on it being something that has received a lot of publicity. She was content to let the savage sixteen cuts through the cabinet it's only when the cuts begin to reflect on her and her party that she changes her mind.

But altogether, the savage sixteen cuts are designed to save about €58 million in an environment where already this year the Government's income is hundreds of millions ahead of target. In other words, these cuts means nothing to the Exchequer.

For the people affected by the cuts, many of them unnoticed and forgotten already, they have meant the difference between hope and despair, between opportunity for improvement and bare survival, between the chance to acquire decent accommodation of their own and remaining in a cramped box room.

The cuts aren't really about savings at all. Instead they reflect the petty and mean-spirited philosophy of those who drive the economic policy of this Government. It is the 'on your bike' philosophy propounded by Margaret Thatcher's favourite Tory, Norman Tebbitt a belief that the poor would not be poor at all if only they tried a little bit harder. I've pulled myself up by my bootstraps, so can you that's the message from a government that is the richest we have ever had to a group of people who are among the poorest of the poor.

And by the way. I know I mentioned it last week, but Michael McDowell, you'll be glad to know, reclaimed the republic for us all once again at the PD annual conference. Isn't it good to know the republic is in such good hands?