Nurses show right way to protest, Harris harassment is not the way
IMAGINE sitting at home on your Sunday afternoon off enjoying time with your family, when a gang purporting to be defenders of the public good park themselves outside your front door with banners criticising you for all your neighbours to see.
Under fire Health minister Simon Harris was made to feel under siege at his home when, like a scene from the 1800s, a group of people gathered outside as he was spending time with his wife, Caoimhe, and their threeweek-old daughter, Saoirse. The group, ‘Fingal Battalion Direct Action Group’, are perfectly entitled to protest against any minister and there is a fine line between a public representative and a private individual, but a line exists and they crossed it at his Co Wicklow home. The fact that a three-week-old baby – who the minister was pictured posing proudly with shortly after her birth – was there doesn’t come into it.
What we saw on Sunday was a group of people taking their fight to the door, literally, of a minister, in a similar way we see British reporters confront MPs and party leaders outside their front doors as they’re going about their daily business. One has to question where the invasion of privacy ends.
Health Minister Simon Harris described the ordeal as ‘very frightening’ for his family and the protest has sparked condemnation from across the political spectrum.
It is the right of the Fourth Estate to press politicians. This can involve hard hitting interviews, Freedom of Information requests detailing excesses and wrongdoing. The media can play a proactive role in public discourse and act in the public interest. It all comes down to the intention of the media organisation.
This trickles down to protestors also. One wonders how much thought they put into their actions on Sunday beyond making up a few banners. The dignified protests across the country by tens of thousands of nurses last week stand in stark contrast to what played out over the course of hours at Mr Harris’s house. I spoke to nurses and they all have a legitimate case for a pay rise. I cannot think of a more important job and as one nurse told me, if a job isn’t assigned to anyone in particular, it ends up being the nurse’s job.
Standing outside hospitals with banners, in the rain and cold, they have behaved impeccably well and clearly are there only because they feel they have to be to get what they want.
The protestors at Mr Harris’s house should have taken a day off and returned to his constituency office Monday morning.
Like many I have been impressed by the Wicklow man’s ascent to one of the most senior roles in Irish politics, but let’s face it the role of health minister is a poisoned chalice, notwithstanding the fantastic wages that sweeten the bitter pill, and he has questions to answer. Mr Harris remains in the eye of a series of continuing political storms, including the nurses’ strike and a huge over-spending row over the new children’s hospital. He is due to apologise to the Dáil this week over information he provided on the cost of the hospital.
The protest group at his house did not do one iota of good. They cost the nurses front page headlines by taking the limelight off a serious issue. Mr Harris will answer his critics. Now its time for groups like ‘Fingal Battalion Direct Action Group’ to answer theirs.