ANALYSIS:The Roscommon hospital affair and defection to the Opposition of a Fine Gael TD is a serious test for the Government, writes DEAGLÁN DE BRÉADÚN
ALL POLITICS is local, as the Irish-American politician Thomas “Tip” O’Neill is said to have remarked. In fact, the expression was coined by his father, Thomas snr, when the young fellow suffered his first and only election defeat, through neglect of his political backyard, in a city council contest.
What is true of Cambridge, Massachusetts holds with even greater force in this State. The good people of Roscommon-South Leitrim, or a fair share of them, are up in arms over the downgrading of their local hospital, and are not looking kindly on any politician who failed to oppose the move.
The long-held feeling of neglect in the west of Ireland has a very sharp and deeply emotional focus these days. To the hospital campaigners, the loss of the emergency service is literally a matter of life and death.
Even their critics have to agree this is a cut above the usual campaign for the retention of a local facility. The size of the protest at Leinster House this week and the depth of feeling involved are evidence of that.
The campaigners have the benefit of articulate and forceful spokesmen and women. Whatever some may think of Deputy Luke “Ming” Flanagan’s smoking habits and trailing goatee beard, he is a trenchant orator who makes a good case and gives no quarter to political opponents.
Likewise, Una Quinn from the Roscommon Hospital Action Committee gave an impressive performance on Vincent Browne’s late-night politics show on TV3 this week.
There may be life-and-death issues involved for Roscommon, but supporters of the Government would argue the stakes are very high indeed from its point of view.
Minister for Health James Reilly was a tough campaigner in opposition, and he is turning out to be an equally formidable presence in government: the medic is not for turning. He maintains the changes to occur in Roscommon hospital come in the wake of the Health Information and Quality Authority report into Mallow hospital, which stressed the need for adequate safety standards in smaller hospitals around the State.
Reilly has described the emergency department in Roscommon as being “unsafe”, as it lacked the range of medical expertise required to treat people with certain life-threatening conditions. He has also asserted that best international data confirm that patients with life-threatening conditions have a higher survival-rate when transported to hospitals with greater volumes of patients, even if those hospitals are some distance away.
In the Dáil, Reilly quoted a Department of Health draft report which found the mortality rate for heart attack victims in University College Hospital Galway was 5.8 per cent, compared to 21.3 per cent in Roscommon hospital over a three-year period.
Meanwhile, the Roscommon affair has been the first piece of good news to come Fianna Fáil’s way since they left government. It is hard to blame them for enjoying the sight of their Fine Gael detractors squirming on the hook for a change.
The puzzle for Fianna Fáil and indeed others is why Fine Gael went so far down the road of making pre-election promises to retain the Roscommon service. Power was falling into their lap in any case, and the only logical explanation for giving these ill-advised undertakings was the hope of achieving the elusive overall majority.
The Roscommon affair distracted attention from Labour rumblings over the joint labour committees, although these were starting to become noisy again yesterday in the wake of the High Court finding that this wage-setting structure was unconstitutional.
The Government parties came into office with 113 TDs – 76 from Fine Gael and 37 from Labour – and the banishment of Denis Naughten into exterior darkness still leaves them with 112.
That’s a secure basis for a five-year term – or is it? Older hands recall how Fianna Fáil and Labour came to power with a total of 101 deputies back in 1992, and some of their supporters were proclaiming not just a five-year, but a 10-year regime. In the event, it lasted only two.
Can the turmoil in Roscommon be contained and confined to the local stage, or is it the precursor to more widespread protests? The mood among some of those who travelled from the west to Leinster House was bitter and disillusioned.
Local Fine Gael TD Frank Feighan, who has taken a different tack from Naughten by sticking with the Government, was called a “traitor”, and he claims he was spat upon. In addition, he says he received two phone calls threatening to shoot him, although he was undecided as to whether a complaint to the Garda Síochána was appropriate in this instance.
Reilly’s backers insist the Roscommon move was not about saving money but saving lives, but the ability of the Government to stand up to pressure has implications in the economic sphere. There is a definite sense that we are in for a “summer of discontent”, perhaps leading to an autumn and winter of more serious strife. Reilly’s colleague, Minister for Education Ruairí Quinn, will be in the firing line next week when the technical group of left-wing and Independent TDs have a motion down condemning reductions in the number of special needs assistants.
It is hard to visualise parents and young children generating the kind of street theatre we see in the TV footage from Athens, but there will be other protests after that. The question is whether we are heading into a Greek scenario of tear-gas and baton-charges – or is the national consensus going to hold? And can the Coalition parties keep their nerve?
Deaglán de Bréadún is a political correspondent of The Irish Times