Irish Examiner view: Harassment has no place in patriotism 

People harassing nurses could better expend their energy donating blood or otherwise helping our community 

Representatives of the INMO, IMO, Fórsa, and Siptu have spelled out the extent of intimidation and violence their members are enduring. 

The ongoing crises in our healthcare system are well known to readers, particularly those who have occasion to visit our overcrowded hospitals, witnessing staff working under severe pressure and in challenging conditions. 

It was still shocking to learn, however, the extent of the intimidation and assaults being suffered by those working in our hospitals, as revealed yesterday by the Irish Nurses and Midwives Organisation and the Irish Medical Organisation.

There were 5,593 assaults on nurses and midwives alone between January 2021 and October 2022 in public hospitals.

The essential contradiction at the heart of such thuggery is immediately apparent. Here are people trying to help others in distress and yet they are being verbally and physically assaulted as they do so.

We also learned yesterday that some nurses in a particular Dublin hospitals were being targeted on their way to and from work: Those nurses are from overseas and have been singled out for racist attacks by protesters.

This is a refinement of the essential contradiction mentioned above. 

Vital frontline workers who are helping Irish people through illness and surgery are being attacked by Irish people for doing so, the kind of counterintuitive formulation one would expect in a novel set in a dystopian future.

The obvious question to ask is what precisely those harassing nurses are contributing to the common good. If they have the time to spare to target foreign workers, it’s not unreasonable to point out they could use that time for more productive pursuits. 

They could donate blood, volunteer at a medical charity, become hospital visitors, or help homeless people. Instead, they are persecuting the very people who are making Ireland a better place to live.

It may be too much to ask those abusing foreign workers to consider the paradox of their position, but they have already shown an ability to maintain a contradictory position.

It is a curious perversion of the notion of patriotism to
consider verbal abuse of hardworking medical staff as
contributing to the welfare of the nation. Yet somehow these protesters can accommodate it.