How did Minister get it so wrong?

THE public should be uneasy about what is happening in the Department of Health when the Minister himself, Micheál Martin, does not seem to know what is going on in the midst of the savage cuts he has instituted in recent days.

The Minister professed surprise at both the cut in the domiciliary care allowance and the job cuts announced this week by the Western Health Board (WHB).

Initially it was suggested that the filling of 800 posts in the health service would be frozen nationally, but when the WHB was instructed to implement its share of those cuts, it announced it was axing 200 jobs.

On the other hand, the Department contended that it merely instructed the WHB to cut 1.15m euro from its budget, which it could do by not filling 85 positions. The WHB has chosen instead to cut 200 positions. Something just does not add up.

The health services already devour 8bn annually, or a quarter of the Government’s spending. This year, 15% extra has been allocated to the Department of Health.

If that was sufficient to cover the extra staff being recruited, why did the WHB have to cut the extra jobs? If cutting 200 positions saves 1.15m euro, it means those people earned on average only about half the minimum wage. Are these real job cuts, or are they merely inflated figures designed to cause political embarrassment?

Throughout the recent general election campaign the Minister for Health persistently maintained there would be no health cuts.

In addition to the cuts that apparently caught the Minister by surprise, the Government also sanctioned a rise in threshold of the Drug Payment Scheme, increased the cost of private and semi-private hospital accommodation, and raised the cost of attending an accident and emergency department.

How did the Minister get it so wrong before the election? Was he out of touch with the reality of what was actually happening, or was he deceived by the Minister for Finance, who made similar promises even while the Department of Finance was already instructing other departments to institute cuts?

Are we now witnessing the end product of the duplicity of the Government itself? In the past year around 16,000 extra people were employed by the health services, but people are being let go, just a few months after both the Minister for Health and the Minister for Finance assured the public there would be no cuts. In fact, they denounced members of the opposition for scaremongering when they predicted post-election cuts.

In the light of recent developments the recruitment drive has taken on all the aspects of a cynical election ploy. The jobs losses will have a dreadful impact on the administrative staff and their families.

None of this was designed to enhance the health services; it was really about deceiving the electorate that the politicians profess to serve.