Kick Private Vultures out of South West Acute Hospital!

The privately financed South West Acute Hospital

Before the South West Acute Hospital was even built, promises were broken by the politicians and more than a dozen key medical services were lost, leaving us with a huge building but with few locally-delivered services. Now it can be revealed that the total cost of the hospital is to overrun by almost HALF A BILLION POUNDS, the vast bulk going into the profits of big business!

 

Many patients have found themselves travelling to Altnagelvin in Derry for even minor procedures. As the Socialist Party predicted, the closure of acute services in Omagh has increased pressure the South West unit, leading to crisis situations. What does it say about the Assembly parties’ commitment to our health service that basic procedures cannot be dealt with in this “state of the art” hospital?

Assembly Cuts Agenda will Devastate Fermanagh

This is a full, unedited version of the letter that was submitted to both the Fermanagh Herald and Impartial Reporter (and which has been published in both).

Northern Ireland Ministers - Agreed on Need for Devastating Cuts

The cuts outlined in the draft Executive Budget and agreed by all the Assembly Parties will devastate Fermanagh and have particularly severe consequences for deprived communities, those who have lost their jobs or forced to work part-time. Yet the same politicians who have signed off on these cuts will feel no qualms about canvassing the communities that these cuts target in the weeks to come.

The Assembly parties realise that their cuts are simply unjustifiable and that is why this draft budget fails to identify what specific actions will be necessary to deliver it. They are trying to get through these elections before people know what is happening.

There is an alternative to these cuts. The Assembly could agree a ‘needs-based’ budget and work with the Stop the Cuts Campaign, local communities and the trade union movement to build opposition to the neo-Thatcherite agenda. There is plenty of wealth in society – it is estimated that £120 billion escapes the tax net through avoidance, evasion and loopholes. Billions are wasted year on year on nuclear deterrents and invading countries like Iraq and Afghanistan; billions more have been paid to bankers, bondholders and property speculators. Yet when it comes to basic services for ordinary people they tell us that the money is not there.

Martin McGuinness shares a joke with David Camerson

A QUB Professor has estimated that these cuts will result in 38,000 job losses across the north. How is this supposed to help improve our economy and improve fiscal receipts? They will undermine not just the public sector but suck the lifeblood from small businesses and the private sector. These cuts only benefit the financial speculators and spivs of the stock-market.

These cuts will devastate the economy of Fermanagh which is already on the precipice. Across Fermanagh, communities face mass youth emigration, those who remain face a stagnant labour market and ever decreasing benefits. The viability of our schools will be ‘reviewed’ once again and more young students will be excluded from higher education. Our elderly will face even greater hardships as they struggle to obtain care services, being pushed to expensive private sector provision. Despite the denials of the Health Trust, these cuts are a sword of Damocles hanging over the public-sector status of the new Southwest Hospital. All our politicians can offer is verbal opposition to cuts while they administrate them in reality regardless of the cost.

Instead of implementing Tory cuts, our politicians should be building opposition to them alongside the community. We need to unite all those affected by these cuts not fall back to the politics of sectarian division. If history teaches us anything it is that only when people are united and campaign effectively that real change can be achieved. One has only to look at the inspirational protests in Egypt to see what real democracy looks like.

Irish Workers Protesting Cuts

We can fight and win against these cuts. Part of that is working to build a wider opposition bringing together trade unionists, community activists and those directly affected by the cuts; another part is to use these elections to elect genuine campaigners to fight the Assembly parties’ cuts, not implement them.

Nursing home cuts - “inhumane and outrageous”

A BBC report has indicated that there is a rationing of nursing home places by the Western Health Trust – this means that every month only 2 new nursing home places in the entire Western Region are to be offered to older people who need them. The decision means that patients cannot be given nursing home places despite the fact that the Trust has empty beds to accommodate them.

This decision by the Western Health Trust to cut nursing home places is a direct attack on the elderly and the vulnerable.

Our older people who have worked all their lives and have paid tax and national insurance yet are treated appallingly. Some are sent home to die to save money; others are forced to live with only 15 minutes support a day when they need much more. Families already struggling with the consequences of the economic collapse are being forced to look after sick and highly-dependent relatives.

The consequences of this inhuman approach are outrageous. One head of a nursing home was quoted as saying:

"I feel incredibly sad when I have to tell families that we cannot help them. In one case, I knew that I was sending an elderly man home to die."

At the same time, cuts have forced the Trust to reduce care packages for elderly or sick people in their homes and those that receive care get a completely inadequate amount. The consequences are that elderly people are being queued up in the Erne Hospital and blocked needed beds there.

Assembly Executive responsible for cuts

This report brings home the real impact of the ‘efficiency’ cuts that were unanimously agreed by all the Assembly Executive four years ago. And they will seem paltry to the cuts that are coming in the near future.

The cuts which the Assembly Executive is carrying out should be met with an organised opposition from local communities, workers, the unemployed and young people. The politicians should be told to go after the rich and the bankers and make them pay instead of carrying out cuts to crucial services.