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Defend Public Healthcare
Stop the health cuts!
Michael Murphy

The Irish Congress of Trade Unions (ICTU) voted in April to enter into negotiations for a new social partnership deal with the government. On the very same day 77 year old Peg Mc Entee was left lying for 60 hours on a trolley in the Mater Hospital in Dublin, she was on the trolley for 17 hours before it was established she had a heart attack. Even then she was left on a trolley for a further 43 hours simply because there was no bed available for her.

The previous day Anthony Butler and Lil Murray who are both carers for their mother and husband respectively spoke on the Pat Kenny Show about how respite beds in Cherry Orchard hospital, Dublin had been cut because of budget restraints enforced by the government and the HSE.

This means that these people receive no break from caring for their loved ones and the only alternative is to place them in long term care which is very expensive.

These are just two of the most recent examples of the health crisis that Mary Harney and Brendan Drumm continue to deny exists.

Despite the unprecedented wealth created by workers during the boom, the health service is a shambles. Despite the lies of the government and the HSE, there is no “black hole” in health funding. Ireland is still way behind most other European countries in terms of health spending. Despite an increase in spending in recent years it has not been enough to repair the damage caused by the cutbacks of the 1980s which cut thousands of beds that have not been replaced despite a significantly bigger population today.

Due to the looming economic downturn the calls to “tighten our belts” are being trotted out by government ministers. The cut backs have already begun. Brendan Drumm has drawn up a list of €100 million in cuts that he is presenting to Mary Harney, which will include bed closures, closure of local health services and hospitals.

These cutbacks must be stopped. There is huge anger in Irish society at the state of the health service. Thousands have taken to the streets in recent months and years to protest at the closure of hospitals and crucial services, 6,000 attended the demonstration in March organised by the Dublin Council of Trade Unions.

ICTU leaders, instead of entering talks for a new “partnership” deal, should begin a real campaign by the trade union movement of mass demonstrations and industrial action to halt the cutbacks and stop the moves to privatise health care.

If the unions took a serious approach to a health campaign, the government could be stopped in their tracks. Unions that organise health workers such as IMPACT, SIPTU, the Irish Nurses Organisation and the Psychiatric Nurses Association have a key role to play. It is their members who are at the coalface of the health crisis.

The unions should organise simultaneous weekday regional mass demonstrations during working hours as a first step in a major campaign against the government’s attacks on the public health system. Fighting to stop the cutbacks has to be linked to campaigning for a real public health service that is based on need, not ability to pay.

The launch of the Campaign for a Real Public Health Service at a national conference in April is a welcome initiative. This is a national campaign open to all groups, unions, and individuals who want to campaign for a real public health service and against the cutbacks. It will seek to fight on the issues facing the health service but also to pressure the union leadership to take serious action in defence of the health service.
Report
Campaign for a Real Public Health Service national conference
Cllr. Mick Barry

More than 100 people attended the Campaign for a Real Public Health Service national conference held in Liberty Hall, Dublin on Saturday 19 April.

The conference came at a time when the government is stepping up its twin campaigns of cutbacks and privatisations and was addressed by many speakers involved in the fight against these policies.

Peadar McMahon, Chairman of the Monaghan Hospital Action Group, said that 17 people had died to date as a result of cutbacks at Monaghan Hospital. Marie O’Connor, PRO of the Health Service Action Group, said that government policy would result in more than 4,000 bed closures in the next six years  -  the biggest closures of bed services since the 1980s.

Professor Allyson Pollack of the Centre for International Public Health Policy at the University of Edinburgh said that the UK equivalent of colocation and privatisation had resulted in 23,000 NHS beds being closed under the New Labour government.

Dr John Barton, consultant physician at Portiuncula Hospital, Ballinasloe, predicted that the Irish health service would end up with 45% of hospital beds in the private sector compared to just 16% in the US.

Philomena Canning, a midwife and member of the National Birth Alliance, said that there were 88 fewer places (20 as opposed to 108) where women could go and give birth than there were 30 years ago as a result of the centralisation policies of successive governments.

Joe Higgins, Socialist Party rep, told the conference that we were at the beginning of a process of vicious cuts by this government and that we would see an increasing number of mobilisations by ordinary people in opposition to this policy.

Des Derwin of the Dublin Council of Trade Unions, speaking in a personal capacity, said that the trade union movement were currently discussing calling a national demonstration in the autumn prior to the Budget and that this might possibly be called for a working day during the week.

He also said that he was mandated by the executive of the Trades Council to call on the Campaign for a Real Public Health Service to recognise that the only national campaign on the issue should be the union-led campaign.

Michael Murphy, facilitator of the conference, welcomed the Dublin Council of Trade Unions demonstration held in late March but said that the national trade union leadership had been voting to open a new round of “partnership” talks with the government this week at the same time that a 77 year old woman was being left lie on a trolley after a heart attack.  He said that there was a need for an independent campaign that brought together health service workers and concerned people in the communities and that one of the aims of this campaign would be to put pressure on the unions to act.

Although the attendance at the conference was less than the organisers had been expecting, it was very valuable in providing facts, figures, information and arguments that can be used in the fight for a real public health service.

The conference concluded by agreeing to picket a conference promoting private healthcare, taking initiatives to spread the campaign around the country and to step up the fight against cuts and co-location.

Helen Redwood spoke to some of those who attended the Campaign for a Real Health Service conference.

Co-location & recruitment embargo

John Gahan, psychiatric nurse in Dublin and active trade unionist:

“We’ve just found out that the proposal to build a psychiatric unit at Beaumont has been scrapped and they’re now going to put a co-located for-profit hospital on the same site. We need to make the trade unions and ordinary members aware of what’s going on, they need to be more active on the issue of co-location and condemning it.

“That’s why our branch has a resolution going to conference condemning co-location and the government policy of implementing a two-tier health service.

“The recruitment embargo is still there. In Connolly Hospital, there’s a unit where the clinical nursing manager has not been replaced. The only way around that is to lose a staff nurse on the ground and run the unit with a nurse short. So there’s no permanent manager of that ward. 

“The HSE have also introduced a non-qualified nursing grade with lower salary and less entitlements on pensions and general rights to replace qualified nurses with four years training.  A lot of quality will be lost.”

Centralisation

Ann Codd, campaigning to keep St Luke’s Hospital, Dublin open:

“My sister fought a nine year battle against cancer and had to attend hospitals all over the place. But she received wonderful care at St Luke’s – the ambience, grounds, everything about St Luke’s is wonderful. It’s been proven as a centre of excellence where patients come from all over the country.

“Now they’re planning to move cancer patients to St James’ and Beaumont. In St Luke’s from the cleaning lady to care on the ward, everything is top class which for cancer patients is therapeutic – it can’t be recreated at Beaumont or St James’ with its overcrowding and traffic running through. Centralising is not about a better service.
“There’s isolated campaigns all over the country, there must be a way of bringing them together to force the government to change because there’s so much discontent.”

Professor Allyson Pollock Centre for International Public Health Policy, University of Edinburgh:

Is the idea of an independent, supportive private health service possible?

“In Ireland all the evidence is that there have been tax breaks, public private partnerships, public funding to special treatment funds, so there’s a considerable amount of public funding going into that. so that’s not evidence of independence.  There’s also hidden benefits [to the private sector] – training of doctors and nurses, research and the other things that the private sector doesn’t do like planning, communicable disease control and all the other services that come out of a truly integrated, comprehensive national health service.”

How can a public health service be funded?

“In rich countries, where you have a tax base, the only three systems are through central tax or through social insurance funds or a mix of social insurance and public insurance like the Medicare system in the US. But all evidence is that the most economical and fairest way is through central taxation.”

Do you think that the juggernaut of health service privatisation can be stopped?

“Who can tell? We can only do as much as we can do. We’re in the middle of a global economic downturn and  governments will have to think again, especially if you get the middle class out of work and on benefits, it will have a hugh impact. The health care industry is only one small section of industry and other businesses might well see that it’s in their interests to have a universal health care system so they don’t have to carry those costs. We need to get doctors and GPs in Ireland to realise the risks to their own small businesses.

But there is opposition, demonstrations [in Britain] going on all round the country all the time.”
Report
2,000 people march to save Tallaght Hospital
The Socialist

Around 2,000 people joined the protest in Tallaght on 29 March to show their opposition to the government’s cutbacks, downgrading and privatisation policies at Tallaght Hospital.

This protest organised by the Tallaght Hospital Action Group (THAG) was an important step in the building of a campaign that can defend the hospital. What is needed now is to build the THAG into an active movement, involving all of the communities in the area as well as the workforce in the Hospital.

To get involved, contact Councillor Mick Murphy on 4934696.
Mercy part-time A&E
Mickey Mouse service not acceptable
Cllr. Mick Barry

Cork's Mercy Hospital have announced that they will open a brand new A&E unit in June but that it will only be open from 8am to 8pm!

A part-time A&E is a Mickey Mouse A&E even if the facilities in it are top class. The people of Cork were promised a top class A&E at the Mercy and should accept nothing less. The new A&E facility has lain idle at the Mercy for more than 15 months now with HSE cuts preventing the hire of necessary staff.

The old A&E is a 24-hour facility but is overcrowded and dilapidated and was deemed unfit for purpose by an emergency taskforce report

This A&E took in more than 10,000 patients last year between the hours of 8pm and 8am (when the new service will be closed), meaning that the already heavily overstretched A&E units at the Cork University Hospital and the South Infirmary are set to be stretched way beyond breaking point from June.

The A&E announcement is just part of a multimillion euro package of cutbacks at the hospital which includes the closure of a 31 bed ward.

The trade union movement and the health service unions in particular should organise a major public protest involving hospital workers and the general public to demand a 24-hour A&E at the Mercy Hospital and an end to health cuts.

The Campaign for a Real Public Health Service in Cork is discussing taking a campaigning initiative on this issue should the unions not move beforehand.