Charities doing State’s work - Obligations on wrong agencies

DURING our financial collapse one of the stock-in-trade assertions was that, in our unequal relationship with too-big-to-fail banks, we socialised losses but privatised profits. The phrase captured the inequity and dysfunction of the crisis.

A pretty similar principle has been in play over recent days when the Irish Cancer Society, a charity with limited government support, was criticised for dropping supports to cancer victims. This led to an outcry that forced a U-turn, a partial one at least, and some supports have been restored.

In this instance our culture has socialised significant obligations — support for the sick — to charities and by so doing allowed the State to shirk entirely natural responsibilities.

The sorry saga raises the most obvious question: How have we allowed so many services fall on the shoulders of charities, charities that often augment HSE services or programmes in ways that should rightly be the responsibility of central government?

Is it that we don’t trust the State to deliver these services? Is it that the services offered are inadequate?

Is it that we, simply, feel the need to do as much as we can for people in trouble?

Or is it that we are not prepared to pay the taxes needed to fund proper health and social services?

Whatever the answer is, the winners and losers are all too obvious — the sick who must depend on grace-and-favour support, and an administration that can wash its hands of what should be a central part of its work.

Fooled again.