Messers Cowen, Lenihan, Harney and Drumm have tried to sell us a load of old cobblers on the State’s finances and the health service — and we’ve bought it, says Dr Garrett FitzGerald
As the country goes down the tubes to keep German pensioners happy in their dotage, and the IMF waits in the wings like the grey-backed crow in a field of newborn lambs, the Irish are being put painfully in touch with a strange concept – reality.
One can’t really blame us here for having no previous experience of the thing, having been, for many generations, victims of a make-believe world, steeped in leprechaunery and visionitis, and diverted for a millennium and a half by pie in the sky. In times of stress, lumps of painted plaster dance and quare hawks receive audible messages from persons who may never have lived and, if at all, are demised for a couple of thousand years.
The Government is similarly suffused with the unreality spirit. Recent, more earthly and tangible revelations show this effect in its pristine state. The leaders of the country, coffers empty and in enormous debt, have made a guarantee to the world that the banks will be right as rain. They are all bankrupt, of course. This came about by reaching a state of having no money and being in insurmountable debt; not a great place for a bank. But, worry not, say Messers Cowen and Lenihan.
Empty pockets
These revered leaders have set all to rights. They, who haven’t a tosser in the kitty, have sworn that they will make the financial problem go away. This they will achieve by standing behind the banks to the tune of €450 billion. From their empty pockets, they will rescue the banks to the tune of €450,000,000,000 – 45 and ten zeros! Simple, meerkat-dot-com stuff, maybe a touch of Juan Sheet – or none at all, Sherlock. The ECB/IMF have been colluding in this temporal-lobe dysfunctionality, suggesting that airy-fairy land extends beyond our borders.
We will believe all of this stuff because it is impossible, preternatural, miraculous and light-years removed from reality — and, not least, because we have always swallowed any old cobblers, solely on the grounds of unbelievability. What good is a belief, if it is not unbelievable? Sure anyone could credit something that is real or proven. It is our special gift that we can accept anything which is unproven or indisputably disproven.
In the new dispensation – reality – it is believable that the HSE will continue to preside over the dismantling of the public health services. Government has cut financing by €1.5 billion to date. Ms Harney has been asked to cut by at least €600 million come Budget time. Further similar cuts will occur in every one of the next several years. To balance the books, if at all possible (or believable), we will have a total health budget of less than 60 per cent of peak within five years.
Croke Park agreement
We are led to believe (on the basis that we’d believe anything) that front-line services will be unaffected, apart from lengthening of waiting lists, closure of wards, closure of hospitals, withdrawal of community services and other health trivia. On the other hand, we are to believe that all this can be done in tandem with the Croke Park agreement, whereby nobody will be sacked and there will be no wage reductions amongst healthcare staff. Such pancake is nothing short of several simultaneous miracles, so one can be certain that it is in keeping with our traditions to swallow it whole.
The changing of the guard at the head of the HSE is imminent. The new incumbent has an unbelievable job ahead of him. It is unlikely that he will break from tradition by spelling things out as they are. He will have to close many of the country’s hospitals, and do it quickly if any kind of half-ways service is to continue at all. Would it be too much to expect that he will tell us honestly that it all has to come about because we have no bloody money – rather than dress it all up with HSE waffle?
The back-up is almost fully in place, a flotilla of for-profit basilicas of medical greed. The new man might suggest that anyone who is fortunate enough to possess private health insurance should keep away from the public system, so that what remains of our once-decent institutions can attend to the destitute.
At the heel of the reel, the inflexibility of a heavily unionised workforce dominant in the public health service will have to come to a head. There is only one way for our hospitals to counteract this tradition: public/private partnerships – unencumbered by the dead hand of the HSE. Staff would have a new employer and would have to deliver. To retain a job in the health service would require two essential elements: 1) the job should be necessary; 2) the job should be carried out. If you believe that such a state currently exists in our public hospitals, you’d believe anything, something we have already established!
We suffer layers of management, general and vocational. These layers do not exist in the private system, because they are unnecessary.
Religious observers
On the plus side this week, The New York Times reports a study which shows that the percentage of religious persons in the world will steadily increase to 87 per cent of all living persons by 2050. It seems all seculars are dying out because of low breeding rates. Meantime, religious observers are breeding like rabbits.
I believe that our grand-children will get to see the end of this unbelievable Darwinian nonsense.
About admin
Loading ...
