Crisis in Health Services

We have seen ‘status black’ with the CUH turning away admissions; we have ever increasing waiting lists for vital procedures, more are left on trolleys, patients are left in pain and often to die.

Today, senior citizens are afraid to get sick, expecting that they will be left of a trolley, neglected.

Shamefully we now have treatments made available to private patients, and refused to public patients.

We have a two tier health service, privatisation seems to be the unwritten agenda, we reject that!

Health in Ireland has become a commodity, it is bought and sold by insurance companies, hospitals and private treatment centers, and by drug companies.

Successive Governments have allowed this crisis to deepen, there is no sign that conditions will improve.

Today, our public health services are resorting to charitable funding, or funding via collections in chip shops and pubs, or through sales of parking services etc.  The huge monies spent by our state are mismanaged, we are top heavy with chiefs, and we refuse to pay front line staff a decent wage, nurses in particular, that might allow them to live and work in Ireland.

Treatments of people with disabilities, the disadvantaged in our society, are a disgrace and a shame in our state – and nobody is held accountable for the neglect.

The ongoing scandal around the Smear Testing for Cervical Cancer should see people named and shamed, many women are needlessly dead, and others are dying.

We publicly call for An Taoiseach and the Minister for Health, Mr Harris, to resign, to take responsibility for their failure to deliver adequate public health services.

Finally, we are calling for new Director General of the HSE, Mr Paul Reid, to refuse to take up office next week unless he publishes specific targets for ending the waiting lists, including significant recruitment on proper wages of both doctors and nurses, carers and other support staff.

Cllr Diarmaid  Ó Cadhla

Secretary, Housing Rights & Reform Alliance