Dear Sir... Readers' Views (09/01/17)
People must protest against health crisis
Our healthcare system is in crisis because of the HSE’s incompetence and flawed government policies. It’s time for collective action for a better health service for everyone.
The real issue isn’t trolleys, on which record numbers of patients are being kept, but poor crisis management strategies, a lack of nurses, a lack of beds, and a lack of commitment in tackling the woes that beset the system.
The Government needs to claw back the profits from the banks we own and bailed out. AIB and Bank of Ireland reported profits close to €2.6b in 2016. Even a percentage of these profits would resolve the bed and and nursing-staff shortages.
Collective protest forced the political classes to do a U-turn on water charges. Perhaps we need collective action to address the crisis within our healthcare system. There’s no point in complaining about that system, and about trolleys, without supporting collective action.
The issues can be addressed — imagine what might happen if the movement that forced the water charges U-turn was harnessed through democratic protest and collective action. I can’t see any political party wanting to get caught on the wrong side of the healthcare argument.
Let the Red Cross run our hospitals
It’s time to bring in the Red Cross to save our hospital patients. Cutback after cutback has been enforced in hospital services, which means being admitted to one is death by a thousand cuts.
It’s quite extraordinary to have a Minister for Health, Simon Harris, bemoaning the fact that his own department is in tatters. From being a Third World health nation we have now been relegated to the fourth division. What next? Bring your own sleeping bags?
Why not give patients crash courses in how to perform their own operations, so they can remove their own organs and sew themselves back up again, thus sparing that poor consultant the indignity of having to work on a medical card holder, when he would prefer to be operating on the lucrative cash customer.
The “job for the boys syndrome” is still evident among executives on boards and political lackeys. Bring in the Red Cross. What we have now is a humanitarian issue unfit for government.
Simon to build 280 housing units
Dublin Simon Community have a new capital development fund to raise €20m from private donors and businesses to establish homes for 500 people in 280 housing units by 2020. Initially, 20, high-support residential units will be built for €3.1m and funded by equity.
This is a solution for some of the homeless. The costs can be repaid with rent allowance. This government has been in power for the past two years and has failed to address all of this, and the cost of everything is going up, including their own salaries by €5,000.
612 patients on trolleys is 1.3km
612 patients on trolleys in Irish hospitals Average length of trolley is seven feet. 612 X 7ft = 4,284 feet, or 1.30 kilometres of patients on trolleys.
Vaccine is free, so no excuses for flu
As flu is contagious, sufferers should not be admitted to main hospitals. If the flu vaccine is free, then there is no excuse for not getting it. Those who did not get the vaccine should not be admitted to hospital.
Given Ireland’s size, it’s beyond belief that Europe’s most expensive health system can’t deal with recurrent winter illnesses. Every new year underscores the inefficacy of government and the HSE.
Councillor support for Apollo House
I have drafted an emergency motion for debate at Dublin City Council’s first meeting of 2017. The subject is the unfolding situation at Apollo House, the improvised homeless “shelter”.
Such has been the negativity towards the Apollo House action from officialdom, and in particular from Dublin City Council chief executive, Owen Keegan, who made some outrageous assertions about the motivations of the activists, in a radio interview with Pat Kenny on December 28, that I felt it necessary for the elected councillors to declare their support.
Likewise, we support the residents in staying beyond the January 11 deadline set by the High Court, during the injunction proceedings, if suitable alternatives are not provided.
Finally, there is a major inconsistency in the quality of Dublin City Council-approved emergency accommodation, as well as a deterioration in standards in a number of locations. As a result, some homeless people opt to rough sleep.
Standards of emergency accommodation are but one dimension of the homelessness crisis, and the very reliance on emergency accommodation is a scandal for which this government has to answer.
Time to Knock claims of a miracle
On a recent Late Late Show episode, there was a discussion about a miracle at Knock shrine. One gentleman said that his late grandfather was one of 15 people who witnessed the alleged miracle, and that his family owned eight shops at Knock, selling religious statues, etc.
Yet, it’s surprising to me that nobody mentioned that an RUC police officer, on his deathbed, confessed that, by using a magic lantern, he projected the images on the gable wall of a church and that it was no miracle.
Anyhow, if a supernatural being or god was made in the image of a human, they would be corporeal and therefore wouldn’t be supernatural.
About the same time as the Late Late Show broadcast, a scientist announced that he had found the fossil of a dinosaur that lived 99m years ago, surely proving the futility of all religion.
Security of a home is social justice
Many people’s pensions vanished as a result of profligate capitalism. People were pushed to buy homes when prices were high. Banks advanced mortgage loans and extensive refurbishment loans.
External banks lent to banks in Ireland. Huge sections of the Irish population, including some developers, very well-to-do people, and government, borrowed substantial sums of money. There was over-extension and over-borrowing and roll-over loans.
At some point, we hit crisis and so did the global, capitalist system, excepting the hyper-rich. The loan hard sell outstripped funds’ capacity to meet demand. Economies ran out of cash and, soon after, capacity to service loans or to generate capital.
So now we have thousands of people made homeless by eviction. The hyper-rich make a property killing. Renting is beyond the means of many people. 20,000 eviction notices have gone out, with 34,000 mortgages in arrears in the last two years.
There is a desperate need for social housing to help families and individuals in terrible circumstances who are in need of safe, secure, and warm, rentable homes.
The European Union needs to help ensure decency throughout the housing market. The security of having a home is a form of social justice.
We are running a risk of divestment of public infrastructure: An Post, Bus Éireann, Iarnród Éireann, other commuter services; health, education, prisons, care for the aged, gas, water, electricity. Telecom and air transport were divested, and we used to have a serviceable merchant shipping fleet. It is possible to have too open an economy.
Those railing against the ‘liberal agenda’ will, like all of us, grow old and may, like all others, have illnesses in time.
Presumably, in the absence of their own means, they will wish the State to assist them when they are ill and old. That’s called social justice.
We citizens were first encouraged to borrow, and were soon after required to carry the cost of collapsing markets and the aftermath. Capitalism demanded that we covered social justice for capitalism. We have been bullied into doing so for at least two generations.
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