You want change? Use your vote

I WAS horrified to read about the waiting time endured for a colonoscopy (Irish Examiner, January 11). I also congratulate you for printing the letter from “Rosie”.

The problem is that we either do not care, or feel it is inappropriate to complain. Bertie Ahern calls himself a socialist. Fidel Castro is a socialist; he runs a top-class health service in Cuba on the same budget as it costs to run the Beaumont Hospital here.

The problems that existed 10 years ago still exist. It is just that those suffering with those problems have been muzzled by an unsympathetic society. The middle classes have expanded courtesy of cheap credit. The Government has never had so much money to play with. Why, then, do we have so much unhappiness, stress, ill-health and a third world health service?

The answer is, the more well off do not care about the less well off. They are now the majority whereas previously they were a minority and the working classes had to be listened to. Big business now controls government. Builders made sure part of the Planning Act was reversed by Government, as it may affect the value of your house to have working-class people living beside you.

A country should not be judged by how well off it is. It should be judged by how it treats its young people, old people and people with illness or disability. In respect of these, we fail utterly.

We have been promised a referendum on children — it will be postponed until after the election. Meanwhile, paedophiles are walking free and prosecutions are being abandoned. Old people are suffering institutional abuse and the HSE could not care less. Bertie opened the Special Olympics in Ireland and yet they do not have enough money to send the Irish team to Shanghai this year.

People like Rosie are dying because Mary Harney (and Micheál Martin before her) are tinkering around the edges of the health service, pretending to make a difference, spending millions on reports without implementing them. To have to wait eight months for a routine test is a disgrace. Do we care enough to do something about it?

The government is no different to a management company of an apartment block to whom owners pay a service charge (in our case, taxes) so the block is run efficiently. People would refuse to pay any management company failing to carry out its duties. We cannot refuse to pay tax, but we can vote for better management of our taxes. These guys have had 10 years. Nothing has changed. It is time for it now, or Rosie’s efforts will have been in vain.

Pat Mullins

Halldene Ave

Bishopstown

Cork