Why the wait? HSE must be off its trolley!
I READ the Irish Daily Mail comment column yesterday headlined ‘It’s a crisis, Minister, a statement is not enough’. I was thinking the same myself.
Thousands took to the streets over the water charges yet here we have a serious epidemic of sick people waiting on trolleys for a hospital bed and a homeless problem that is getting worse by the day and hardly a soul on the street from the electorate in protest. It is as if it is all acceptable in this very rich nation in the 21st century.
From this day forth, anyone who votes Fine Gael or Fianna Fáil in the next general election must be living in ‘cloud cuckoo land’ or on another planet. It is time to issue the P45s and sack these people who are purported to represent the electorate.
As a pensioner myself, I find it a very disturbing thought that I might be a victim of this regime and end up on a trolley waiting for hours on end in a hospital corridor for a bed.
I have an awful feeling that keeps coming to mind: Is this situation deliberate? Is there a hidden agenda to cull the elderly? After all, we are all living longer and we keep reading and hearing of the ‘pensions time bomb’ that awaits us down the road.
I can’t help feeling something sinister is afoot. Nothing seems to be of concern to this Government to rectify the situation in the health service or the homeless situation with any speed.
All we get is waffle and statements of intent written by ‘spin doctors’ but no action to speak of. The HSE has billions of euro pumped into it each year. There is something seriously wrong that needs investigating.
As a footnote, I have had colonoscopy check-ups over many years at Ennis General Hospital and I cannot fault the consultants and the nursing staff, they have been wonderful to me, so let’s not blame those at the ‘coal face’. DAVID J COLEY, Ennis, Co. Clare.
We’re not working
WHILE watching RTÉ TV’s Reeling In The Years on 1992 I was reminded during a segment of the show about the apalling unemployment statistics from that particular year (18%), with everlengthening dole queues at the time.
Then I remembered that during the past 30 years (18 of which I worked overseas) Ireland’s unemployment rate had been well in excess of the most unacceptable level of 12% for many of those years including 1984 to 1996 and 2009 to 2013 (17 years in total).
Without the safety valve of emigration – to Australia and USA, etc – those statistics would have been much worse.
If we are to listen to the politicians over the past year we would be inclined to believe that high unemployment was at an end. But looking back over the years we can see that there has been boom and gloom regarding full employment (which is classed as an unemployment rate of lower than 5%).
We’ve heard boasts that 50,000 jobs were created in 2016. However, more than 55,000 students sit the Leaving Certificate each year. Even those who go on to higher education must eventually either appear on the Irish job market or emigrate. TOM BALDWIN, Midleton, Co. Cork.
Caution recommended
THE parliamentarian and philosopher Edmund Burke said ‘society is a contract, between those who are living, those who are dead, and those yet to be born’.
He believed that civilisation rested on this principle of a respect and empathy for past and future generations. His observations were made in the context of the horror and evil of both the French Revolution (and its genocide and anti-clericalism) and the so called ‘Glorious Revolution’ in England, fuelled by crude and hate filled anti Catholicism.
Abortion is the ultimate betrayal of the social contract; the bullying of the weak by the strong taken to its ultimate and horrific end.
The omens are not at all promising, but hopefully compassion and empathy will prevail and people will realise the potential evil they are about to unleash.
ERIC CONWAY, via email.