HEART BEAT:Tánaiste Mary Coughlan's words are very disconcerting and unintelligible in parts, writes MAURICE NELIGAN.
“But what can we expect if we haven’t any dinner
But to lose our teeth and eyelashes and keep on
growing thinner?”
(Edward Lear; Nonsense Songs)
WE’RE BROKE and sliding precipitously into the red to the tune of €400 million a week. So how do we fix this, given the fact that we all believe it’s somebody else’s problem?
Colm McCarthy and his group have done us all a favour by outlining our problems starkly and then dispassionately noting areas where savings might be made. He would be the first to acknowledge that the list is not exhaustive and that there may well be other areas which might allow economies.
He did what he was asked to do and he has laid his report before the Government and the people. It is up to the Government to produce the omelette and decide which eggs must go. My only problem with this is that, in the words of GK Chesterton’s, Father Brown, “It isn’t that they can’t see the solution. It is they can’t see the problem.”
How else can you explain holidays as usual and an attitude that suggests the troubles can wait till they get back? This makes the rest of us a mite uneasy.
It is even more disconcerting to read reports of Tánaiste Mary Coughlan’s address to the MacGill summer school in Donegal and also to her observations on the McCarthy report. Concerning this, she said that she had instructed her department and also the think-tank Forfás to carry out an evaluation across all Government departments to assess the impact of the report on employment and on the “productive” sector.
Sorry Minister; that simply won’t do. The work is done, the report is complete. All that is required is for the Government to sit down and make the hard decisions. The McCarthy report is a guide as to where savings are possible. Your job is to make them and raise the money to save our economy. We don’t need Forfás to second guess McCarthy. Do we need Forfás at all?
You had more to say Minister. Parts of your address were unintelligible to me and I suspect to others, eg “There is no place in Ireland where the majority have to make painful choices for this level of economic conceit from any sector.”
What does that mean in plain English? I might point out that the ‘majority’ you refer to had no part in these painful choices. They did not choose them. It gets worse: “There are certain sectors where competition and the chill winds of economic reality have yet to reach.”
Indeed; might I suggest that your Government is one such sector? No State cars gone, full- time civil servants are still working in constituency offices, and we see only minimal and fiercely resisted changes in allowances and pension entitlements. Not exactly leading from the front; is it Minister?
You go further and professional services, engineers, architects, lawyers, dentists and others are mentioned. I assume doctors are included in this “others” group. Are you aware Minister as to what is happening beyond your little cocoon?
Architects and engineers have been savagely hit over the past year with unemployment, part-time working and pay cuts and reduced incomes throughout the sector.
Young solicitors cannot obtain employment and barristers and established firms of solicitors cannot get payment from clients who are under extreme financial pressure.
Dentists have seen a major reduction in income as patients defer or cancel treatments they can no longer afford. Doctors have had reductions in fees imposed upon them by the VHI and other insurers and private practice has fallen as people forsake private cover and fall back on the public system, itself already savaged by your Government.
There has been an 8 per cent reduction in fees paid by the State to such professionals and they, like everyone else, are subject to the health levy and many to the pension levy as well.
You refer to the Competition Authority, another institution of dubious value. Do you, through them, envisage the emergence of groups of “Yellow pack” professionals undercutting each other?
An, “I’ll do your piles for €50 less than the other fellow” sort of scenario. Dream on Minister. One might ask, where was the Competition Authority during the recent electricians’ strike? Did they encourage individuals to compete by lowering their hourly rate? No they did not.
One thing you got right. You said your colleague, the Minister of Health, was affecting economies in that sector. Ask the pharmacists, they’ll tell you.
They’ll also tell you that they sought a meeting with the Minister to discuss how equivalent savings might be made in the sector. They’re still waiting. The Minister doesn’t do listening. The parents of critically ill children in Crumlin, patients in Sligo, Nenagh and Ennis can all attest to supposed savings in the health service at their expense.
Money might be saved, the bloated administration remains untouched, and the patients and their families suffer; that's not my kind of Ireland, Minister. A little thought before you speak might be a good idea, as your address in Pickwickian terms was "dumb as a drum with a hole in it". (Dickens, Pickwick Papers)
Maurice Neligan is a cardiac surgeon