Irish Examiner view: US aid, arms, and mixed messages

Ceasefire in Gaza is needed more than ever

People rush to landing humanitarian aid packages dropped over the northern Gaza Strip on Tuesday. Picture: AFP via Getty Images

The coverage of the savagery in Gaza is necessary and informative, but it can also have an adverse effect on our consciousness of the conflict. 

On a regular basis we are registering the fact that people are being killed and maimed on the ground in that part of the world, yet we are also becoming inured to that fact, partly by dint of repetition and partly because our experience is an abstract one.

In that regard it was enlightening to read the reports from this newspaper’s Elaine Loughlin, who is currently in the region; those reports flesh out what is happening in searing detail.

For instance, we learned earlier this week that close to the Rafah border there are tented warehouses full of material which would be of considerable help to hard-pressed Palestinians — CT scanners, oxygen masks, incubators for babies, crutches for people who have lost limbs, and ambulance stretchers.

However, those items are all included in a growing list of items considered ‘dual use’ by Israel and are therefore not allowed to enter the Palestinian enclave.

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There is a grim irony in the fact that another story coming out of Israel suggests that it is making advanced plans for another catastrophe it is about to unleash. 

Reports state that Israel has procured tens of thousands of tents for the Palestinian civilians it intends to evacuate from Rafah in the coming weeks. 

This is ahead of an assault being planned by Israel on that city.

If this assault is carried out we can expect to hear more cries for a ceasefire, but those appeals have fallen on deaf ears so far. 

The US appears to be the only authority with significant influence over Israel, but the former agreed an international aid package this week which includes a provision of $26.3bn (€24.5bn) for Israel and humanitarian relief for civilians in conflict zones, including Gaza.

This is the very definition of a mixed message and epitomises the lack of initiative from the US in brokering a real ceasefire — which is needed now more than ever.

Hospital safety: Some impetus for reform

Irish hospitals have featured heavily in the headlines recently, but not for the right reasons. 

In fact, a litany of recent news stories has cast a significant shadow over our hospital system for different reasons, all of them unsettling.

The Limerick Coroner’s Court inquest into the death of teenager Aoife Johnston at University Hospital Limerick (UHL) has been hearing horrifying testimony from Aoife’s family as well as hospital staff. 

On Wednesday we learned that one doctor on duty at that time was trying to manage 191 emergency department patients on her own: Aoife’s death was “instrumental” in the doctor’s decision to leave the HSE, she told the inquest.

Aoife Johnston, died after waiting 12 hours on a chair to see a doctor at an overcrowded and understaffed University Hospital Limerick, in December 2022. Picture: David Raleigh

It also emerged on Wednesday that Wexford General Hospital is dealing with an outbreak of covid-19, with one particular ward of the hospital affected.

In a grim echo of the terminology commonly used in the pandemic, visitors to that ward are only be allowed in exceptional circumstances — where a patient is critically ill or at end of life.

Earlier this month, we learned that an internal review into the fatal assault of an 89-year-old man in a Cork City hospital ward remains uncompleted.

Matthew Healy died in January 2023 after an incident in a six-person ward of the Mercy University Hospital. 

A man has been charged with his murder and a review of the hospital’s procedures was due to be published last October, but a spokesman for the South/Southwest Hospital Group told this newspaper on April 8 that this review is still ongoing. 

The hospital system has been unable to complete the review 15 months after the initial event.

There is an element of cognitive dissonance in suggesting there are Irish hospitals which are fundamentally unsafe, but it is hard to argue against that perception when one considers the events above.

What is harder to establish is whether to view those events as a tipping point in the ongoing crisis in Irish hospitals or whether they are simply evidence of the ongoing chaos within that system.

The former might suggest some impetus for reform or improvement, but that appears to be too much to hope for.

Post office closure: Community blow

The closure of Ring post office in the Waterford Gaeltacht represents a community blow on several different fronts.

Towns and villages all over Ireland have seen various services disappear in recent years, from bank branches to Garda stations, but losing a post office is particularly traumatic. 

It is a de facto community hub, particularly for elderly residents collecting their pensions. 

Ring residents must now travel to Dungarvan to conduct their business rather than meeting neighbours and friends at the local post office. 

The post office in Ring, Co Waterford.

The closure also raises awkward questions about those residents’ right to conduct their business with State bodies through the Irish language under Section 11 of the Official Languages Act 2003.

The primary objective of this act was to ensure better availability and a higher standard of public services through Irish, which can hardly be achieved if those services are not being offered at all.

The fact that such services will not be offered in an Irish-speaking area makes a nonsense of An Post’s own policy statement: “We are committed to the provision of services through Irish.” 

Time for An Post to practice what it preaches.