We need to stop closing facilities that will be replaced by imaginary services, writes MAURICE NELIGAN
WE’RE TO lead the world in the abolition of cluster bombs. While not detracting from the worthiness of that aspiration, one wonders if such announcement at such time is merely designed to avert attention from the bombs exploding on our benighted government.
There are other diversions also, showing evidence of great minds at work. We are to have a new law against blasphemous libel. It could have been invoked against me yesterday in the insignificant matter of a golf ball and a certain bunker and the possibility that I could spend the rest of my days trying to remove the former from the latter. Seriously though, there is real merit here. Think of the numbers that could be employed patrolling the dole queues and noting the seditious blasphemous libels being vented by angry people against the powers who landed them in this predicament. Any pub in Ireland would provide further incendiary examples of intemperate utterances from the ungrateful peasantry.
I’ll give you another laugh, providing you are still capable of that harmless activity and that it hasn’t been taxed yet. We’re top of the world in dealing with so called “swine fever”. This might appear a little surprising since the health powers have been in dispute with the doctors who will be front line, if this threat were to materialise. No, I am not referring to the GPs or all the other doctors who our warrior minister is battling. I am talking about the public health doctors whose particular bailiwick this is. I suppose that all will kiss and make up in national emergency. The doctors have never been found wanting in such circumstances over the years. The HSE fail on an almost daily basis.
Let us hope that this particular canard is never tested. On being asked if this developed badly, and numbers required hospitalisation; would there be enough beds available, Dr Kelleher answered unequivocally that there would. First of all, the single rooms in the hospitals would be used. One is tempted to imagine the exchange: “Ah, excuse me; are those the same single rooms that the MRSA patients occupy?” “Er yes, but we can always move them onto trolleys and, if necessary, move them outdoors. Fresh air is good for MRSA.” “Excuse me asking again, but are those the same beds that the cystic fibrosis patients are meant to have while they await their promised unit?” “Well, yes, but times are bad and we have to protect the jobs of those in the rear echelons who do all the spinning and covering the Minister’s rear; the cystics will have to wait. They’re very good at that.”
The Sunday Timesof April 19th ran a story about a gentleman who had been employed as press secretary (spin doctor) for the Progressive Democrats when in government. With the demise of that party one might have expected that his contract might cease. Not so, he said he had been contracted to work for the Minister for Health and not for the PDs. This circumstance of the relocation of this man is despite the fact that the Minister already has a personal press officer (spin doctor) paid a large salary. She also has a programme manager at €177,000, and a special adviser at €150,700. She has also used HSE employees on secondment. Leaving them aside; the cost of this little cluster comes in at €564,000.
There is also the whole apparatus of the HSE and we mustn’t forget the faceless souls who labour in the mines of the Department of Health almost crushed by the awesome responsibility of whatever it is they do. All of these structures are for a population of just 4.25 million souls; less numbers than Greater Manchester or Birmingham. It’s worse than that. Nearly half the people covered by this unaccountable umbrella choose not to believe the fairy stories and seek their own health salvation through private insurance. The Minister’s drive toward privatisation, lacking any mandate needless to say, should further lighten the workload of those unfortunates struggling to work in this woeful web she has created.
The citizens wonder where the money goes. In olden times they got no answers. They must, in these times, when the money is exhausted and every cent will have to be accounted for and justified. The anger grows as the profligacy of power, privilege and placement is exposed and the services supplied are worse than ever.
There are more gloomy statistics with every passing day and we have reached the situation of which David Lloyd George wrote that “you cannot feed the hungry on statistics”.
We accept statistics as evidence of problems in our society, but truth to tell there is no need for such mathematical evidence here. The reality including dole queues and food parcels is right before our eyes.
I have a suggestion for the health service in these times. Cease the pretence, the lies and the spinning. Let us maintain what we have now and weather the storm as best we can. Stop closing facilities where there are only imaginary services to replace them. Support the patients and those who look after them. A pedestrian service is better than fantasies incapable of realisation. Good luck to the people of Sligo currently holding back the torrents of delusion.
- Maurice Neligan is a cardiac surgeon