HEART BEAT:It's rubbish to suggest we've turned some mythical corner, writes MAURICE NELIGAN
QUO VADIS, or Where are you going? is a question that we should perhaps ask each other at the advent of what promises to be a difficult year. I don't mean an "are you alright" kind of analysis. I mean, are we as a nation alright and what can we do to reach firm ground?
One thing should be clear to us all: it won’t be business as usual. We cannot assume that we have had some temporary hiatus and that normal service will be resumed as soon as possible. We’ve got to take a good hard look at what went wrong and why, and in so far as is possible, make sure that it can’t happen again. What has happened has ruined many lives and indeed blighted the prospects for our children and grandchildren. Let nobody trivialise this and feed us rubbish about some mythical corner being turned. What is ahead is a long hard road with no easy shortcuts.
The pre-Christian Greek philosopher Epicurus wrote: “It is pointless for a man to pray to the Gods for that which he has the power to obtain for himself.”
There is no point in sitting down and being complaisant any more, we must get involved and change things. The wife of a departing US ambassador, on being pressed for her opinion of the Irish, suggested that we lack a sense of outrage. I am not sure if that is true. We can be aroused to protest vehemently about myriad malfunctions and injustices, but we seem unable to sustain the effort to follow the protests through.
I am accustomed to writing about our dysfunctional health service. Nothing seems to happen that might improve it. We get reports, statements and political promises aplenty, but the situation just gets worse on the ground. To claim that it is improving is untrue.
In March 2006 Mary Harney, speaking of the AE crisis, said: “The bottom line is that no one, particularly no older person, should sleep overnight on a trolley in a corridor. I am determined to put an end to that for good. People who need to be admitted will have beds not trolleys and the basics for human dignity. This will be put in place in the coming months. Anything less than this is not acceptable to the public, not acceptable to me, and not acceptable to the HSE.”
At the time she made this statement, there were between 200 and 220 patients on trolleys nightly in our hospitals. At last count we had 414. What price the bottom line now, Minister? It might also be noted that the following hospitals all had patients on trolleys: Mater, Beaumont, St Vincent’s, Cork University Hospital, Galway University Hospital, Waterford Regional and Mid Western in Limerick. These are all centres of excellence for the breast cancer programme. What happens everything else?
Let’s cast the net a little wider than the health service. Scores of our citizens are being imprisoned for trivial debt. One recent case involved a man failing to purchase a dog licence. Families have lost their homes and many more are struggling to meet mortgage repayments. Some 90,000 people are on rent assistance. Our most vulnerable people have been savaged by a draconian Budget. Prescription charges, reduction of allowances for carers and the blind, and cuts in social welfare are the order of the day.
It is hard therefore to accept that the incompetents who presided over the creation of our woes remain in office and tell us that the ordinary people must pay the price for their mistakes. In the Island of Saints and Scholars 2010, the working citizens suffer while the coterie of bankers, developers and compliant politicians who created the problems, still occupy the big houses and drive the big cars. Many talked amounts of money that are inconceivable to the rest of us.
The problem was, of course, that it wasn’t their money, but we’re going to have to repay it. The little people go to gaol, the chancers walk free and seemingly unashamed. I have no objection to the big house and the flamboyant lifestyle by anybody. We would be a dull outfit if grey austerity was imposed on all. However, it should be their own money that sustains it.
We have the added insult of being told that this is not the time to institute an inquiry into what happened. Strangely I agree with that. The time was a year ago and those responsible should have been dealt with in appropriate fashion. This is not about vengeance. It is about basic justice.