Harney’s free market approach a guarantee of failure

EMBATTLED Health Minister Mary Harney is a clever, articulate woman with an enviable political career stretching back to the 1970s.

She has many notable achievements to her name and a generation of Dubliners have her to thank for improved air quality thanks to her smokeless fuels initiative in the late 1980s which banished the scourge of smog from the capital.

However, in the portfolio of health, her whole approach and ideology are all wrong.

Her tenure has been a disaster as a result of the ill-conceived, revenue-soaking HSE monolith for which she was responsible.

Despite all this she gamely states she “doesn’t accept failure”.

Let’s not forget her desire to return to this portfolio was endorsed by the Taoiseach.

His remark that Harney will remain in this position “for many years to come” shows once again the couldn’t-care-less attitude of the Taoiseach, especially since his re-election this year.

However, as Harney herself was resoundingly, if rather short-sightedly, re-elected last May, it’s hardly unreasonable for this Government to assume that the voting populace (or at least a part of it) has given them carte blanche to continue on this track in the area of health.

So, while Harney and the Government doggedly refuse to change tack, people suffer and in some cases die.

Harney’s belief in the free market, as opposed to State-run institutions, will not easily waver despite all the facts to the contrary.

In America, where private healthcare dominates, more than 47 million people currently have no health provision as Harney’s beloved mantra of ‘competition’ and ‘choice’ saw private healthcare operators actually increase their rates, effectively pricing many people out of the market.

What’s laughable about all of this is that the opposition — Fine Gael, at any rate — are quick to condemn Harney without offering any real radical alternative, while the Greens — so keen to criticise this type of thinking while in opposition — are meekly falling into line to endorse Harney’s continuation in her ministry. !

All this talk about various reports, so-called centres of excellence and private hospitals on public lands misses the core issue.

What we really need is an excellent nationalised healthcare system for all our population as a basic human right, regardless of wealth or income, instead of the current two-tier system where those with the larger wad of cash can effectively jump the queue.

Harney’s political career will, no doubt, survive this current turbulence. However, what are the prospects for those who continue to be forced to run the gauntlet of our disgraceful, dysfunctional national health service?

David Marlborough

103 Kenilworth Park

Dublin 6w