Health protests – Government candidates face roasting

IF the Government expected controversial local issues to be swamped by the political squabbling over the citizenship referendum, it will be in for something of a shock when voters go to the polls on Friday.

Judging by the flurry of hospital protests up and down the country, people on the ground are angry and see the elections as an opportunity to send out a loud signal to the Coalition, two years into its term of office.

In particular, going on the results of the latest opinion poll, Fianna Fáil, the country’s biggest party, is in danger of losing an unprecedented number of seats in the local elections.

This is a clear reflection of the tangible sense of grassroots’ outrage over the failure to deliver on health promises ranging from Mayo, to Cork, Donegal, Dublin, Galway, Kildare, Limerick, Roscommon, Tipperary, Westmeath, and Wexford.

Across the country, facilities lying idle include acute hospital units, services for the elderly, mentally ill people, and the disabled.

By any yardstick, the mothballing of state-of-the-art facilities is a major scandal and, along with its failure to recruit 2,000 extra gardaí, a damning indictment of how this Government has reneged on promises.

Essentially, there has been a chronic lack of funding to fit out new facilities or to staff hospital units which remain closed because of Government restrictions on staff recruitment levels.

Likely to be the final litmus test of public opinion in the campaign, the latest Sunday Business Post poll puts the level of Fianna Fáil support for the local elections at just 29%. It may be a snap shot in time, but the harsh reality for Taoiseach Bertie Ahern’s party is that if these results were echoed in the ballot box, it would face the prospect of losing as many as 100 seats in city and county councils across the country.

Going on the turnout at protest marches in recent days, local people are intensely bitter over health issues, especially the fact that hospitals are lying idle, worsening the crisis gripping Ireland’s creaking health service.

The level of anger was plain to see in Clonmel on Saturday when 6,000 people took to the streets calling on the Government to open a €24m surgical unit which remains firmly shut under lock and key at the town’s South Tipperary General Hospital.

At the same time, 20,000 were marching in Waterford, demanding action on the long-promised radio therapy unit for the south-east region.

Angry demonstrations have also taken place in Mayo and Dublin, where Ballymun residents called for their new health centre to be opened immediately. This multi-million euro project has lain idle for more than 18 months.

Pouring petrol on the flames of the health controversy, the general hospitals at Ennis and Nenagh are at risk of being downgraded by the highly unpopular Hanly plan.

Nationwide, an astonishing €460 million worth of new facilities are lying idle, including hospital buildings, theatre units and wards.

This at a time when Fianna Fáil ministers were blithely pouring €15 million into the Punchestown white elephant or, in the case of the Killorglin Rowing Club formally opened yesterday, breaking the ground rules to facilitate projects in political fiefdoms, a charge denied by Tourism Minister John O’Donoghue.

Inevitably, the mood of fear and anger evident at grassroots level is bound to take its toll on Government candidates in the local elections.