HEART BEAT:I suppose it was easier to live the lie than to stand up and cry halt to the madness, writes Maurice Neligan
WE'VE HAD the merry Christmas, and wishing one another a prosperous new year sounds suspiciously like whistling when walking past the graveyard.
The anaesthesia of the festive season is over and we are coming around to the expected pain we had temporarily managed to erase from our consciousness.
I don't pretend to know how bad it will be, but many folk whose opinions I respect have told me that things may get very bad indeed. This doleful prospect is right there in front of us; now.
It was there all along of course for those who cared to look as we carefully blew up our very own bubble undeterred by the lessons of history. It seemed to dawn on very few that our little island with its paucity of natural resources was living a dream; a dream that is now evolving into a nightmare with disastrous consequences for many.
It is apparent that it was easier to live the lie than stand up and cry halt to the madness that replaced sober reality.
Now we have to set about making our living in the real world. There are no easy solutions here, no safe pathways through the quicksands that beset us.
We await credible leadership from whatever quarter, proposing a plan that we can believe in and accept. The anaesthetic is all used up but the pain is real and growing.
How about us seeing some changes at the heart of Government. These may be relatively small things, symbolic almost. But symbols can have almost totemic significance and may awake in ordinary people the feeling that at last something is being done.
I am talking about forgoing the last pay rise granted to ministers and senior office holders. I am not talking about deferring it. I am talking about scrapping it.
Let's all have a look at the entitlement to State cars and question whether these should be available other than on State business. Let's ask if junior ministers should have them at all. Let's ask while we are at it, the reason for the very high numbers of such ministers and whether they do anything constructive. Let us not forget through our questioning phase that we are a very small country of four million people and that currently we are broke.
We might ask is it really necessary to provide cars and drivers for ex taoisigh and past presidents. Maybe such, if necessary at all, should be restricted to the year immediately after leaving office? Could we question whether any person should be entitled to more than one State pension; at a time when the citizens who have worked hard to sustain this crazy edifice are losing their pension rights and other entitlements?
Could we look at the labyrinthine structures of expenses and at the very least abolish the entire concept of unvouched expenses. These are all small things in the overall scheme of things but they would demonstrate earnest intention. This does not go so far as to look at the actual political establishment.
Do we really need 166 TDs? Do we need a Senate at all? Do the multiple political appointments to State boards achieve anything and surely any such appointees should have relevant experience? This is not the case now. Many people can flesh out this brief list, I ask them to think about it.
I'll ask a further question. Why, since we are lumbered with the bureaucratic monster that is the HSE, do we need the Department of Health?
Have they a function other than singing carols at Christmas?
Winter Wonderland is right; these folk are in wonderland all year round.
Another little question; how is it that one of the major players in this world of private medicine beloved of this Minister, is laying off staff from its brave new world and forcing pay cuts on those remaining? This is hardly an endorsement of the bankability of co-located institutions in which this group is involved.
Riddle me this one also; why shut down the elective orthopaedic unit in Navan for the second year running, leaving the trained staff idle and yet transfer such patients to private hospitals under the NTPF?
Wonderland could teach this lady nothing; in addressing the Oireachtas Select Committee on Health and Children, this Minister said she was concerned at the slow rate of progress in implementing new HSE working arrangements. She said that no clinical directors had been appointed to date. Sanction for such directors did not reach some hospital groups until after these astonishing remarks were made.
Did it not occur to her either that those consultants whose units were closed due to funding problems might also have difficulty in reaching fictional targets?
She was being tough and withholding monies due to various groups of doctors since 2007 until there was evidence of implementation of her "reformed health practices".
This grouping whose money was withheld included the pensioners and sometimes their widows who would hardly be capable of implementing her inane scheme.
Lastly she said there had been "no tangible benefits for patients".
Bit of news here Minister; there have been few tangible benefits for patients throughout your tenure. Could you do us all a favour and move on; let somebody else deal with the wreckage.
• Maurice Neligan is a cardiac surgeon