Dublin - Event Notice
Thursday January 01 1970

Public forum on the health crisis

dublin | rights, freedoms and repression | event notice

Thursday April 06, 2006 15:15

by people before profit - people before profit alliance/Davitt League

all welcome

Public forum: Your health: Whose business? Is there a solution to the crisis in the health service?

The People Before Profit Alliance / Davitt League is hosting a forum on the crisis in the health service at 7.30 pm on Friday 7 April in the Irish Film Institute, Eustace Street, Dublin 2.

Public forum: Your health: Whose business? Is there a solution to the crisis in the health service?

The People Before Profit Alliance / Davitt League is hosting a forum on the crisis in the health service at 7.30 pm on Friday 7 April in the Irish Film Institute, Eustace Street, Dublin 2.

Speakers include
Dave Hughes, Deputy General Secretary, Irish Nurses' Organisation,
Dr Peadar O'Grady, author of Why the Irish health service is in crisis.

This health meeting is one in a series of People before Profit Alliance/Davitt League-organised fora on critical issues for Irish society that have already discussed housing, natural gas and oil resources, waste disposal and incineration, women in 21st century Ireland and People Before ProfitAlliance / Davitt League's approach to electoral politics. The Alliance brings together campaigning groups and individuals, to promote a different politics for the 21st century, one that empowers people in
their workplaces, their communities and on the streets. It is inspired
by the resistance of the Rossport 5 and the Irish Ferries' marchers to
increasingly undemocratic and unaccountable institutions.

On the health crisis:
Dr Peadar O Grady said, “After nine years of Fianna Fail and the PDs in office the current chaos in our hospitals is a national scandal. Brendan Gleeson slamming the health service on the Late Late Show was applauded by the vast majority of people who are tired of seeing sick relatives on trolleys and listening to Mary Harney's excuses.

The government's policy since 2001, 'The Health Strategy', is to put back 3000 public hospital beds, but Harney wants these to be private beds in for-profit hospitals which are mushrooming. American multinational Triad will run the new Beacon Clinic in Sandyford in Dublin.

Mary Harney argues that for-profit beds are cheaper and more effective. This is a lie.

Firstly for-profit hospitals will be given massive state handouts of billions in tax breaks and public land and will not give full services, only cherry picking straight-forward elective surgical cases.

Secondly, in the USA, more than $1 in every $3 in for-profit hospitals goes on beaureaucracy or profits. As a result the USA has the worst value for money in the world with the health status of American citizens ranked in the thirties while health spending ranks number one!

Why would mary harney lie? Why refuse to fund public beds and solve the trolley crisis? This is because profit comes first, not health, in the economic model Harney follows, called 'neoliberalism'. Private instead of public, means more profit. Insurance instead of tax, means more profits. Fees rather than salaries means more profit. Both mean more beaureaucracy too.

Immediate funding for better health centres and more hospital and nursing home beds and staff would solve the crisis within months. As long as neoliberals like Harney or Ahern are in charge of the health service, profit will be put before people.

It will take mass demonstrations of young and old, patients and health workers, like those seen recently in France, to turn around these policies and kick the profiteers out of the health service once and for all.”

The People Before Profit Alliance/Davitt League believes that specific campaigners have a common general enemy, in the 'neo-liberal
agenda' of business interests, bureaucrats and mainstream politicians.
These enthusiastically endorse or fatalistically accept the virtually
unrestricted pursuit of profit and the 'market-place' in Irish society.
Parties of the conventional 'left' - Labour, the Greens and Sinn Féin -
reject substantially higher taxation of corporations and wealthy
individuals, and offer themselves for coalition with parties funded by
business interests (FF, FG and the PDs). They have all accepted,
explicitly or tacitly, Margaret Thatcher's notorious mantra, 'there is
no alternative'. People Before Profit Alliance / Davitt League offers
an alternative, giving precedence to human and community need over
private greed. It is determined to develop a well-researched,
thoughtful, coherent and radical challenge to the prevailing consensus.

Contact:
Catherine@086 0679708; Rory@086 1523542; Peadar O Grady: 0879879489
www.people-before-profit.org.

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Comments (2 of 2)

he who pays the piper calls the tune"

by SWPwatch

Sat Apr 08, 2006 00:32

Dr Peadar O'Grady is a member of the SWP. Why do they never state their affilliation?

Message

If your party stops building fronts, we will start trusting your party .

Until then -- STATE your affiliation or we will state it for you.

This is honest way to behave.

Saw the Posters printed by the SWP in Bray for the Allience.

Has the Allience never heard the phrase "he who pays the piper calls the tune"

I bet you the SWP do all the donkey work, putting up the posters, printing the leaflets

That means you will develop no independent infrastructure and you will depend on them.

I bet you this is happening already. Have you a loose structure? Who chairs the meetings? who calls the meetings ?

DO dozens and dozens of activists turn up at meetings ? They certainly did at the teachers club a months ago?

Was there dozens and dozens of of Green party members?
This was planned. A consistent tactic. Packing.

The Allience needs the trust of the Irish People.

The SWP do not deserve trust and will never be trusted because the use other peoples names all the time, day in , day out. And the Irish are not stupid.

If you associate with tarred lousy, tarred reputations you will weaken your message.

This is not a pretext for disagreeing with stated policies of the SWP, but only a warning as to your ability to trust them, which is nil.

Cheers

Waiting Lists

by Emily

Fri Apr 07, 2006 14:23

There are hospital waiting lists which will be raised tonight. Theres another waiting list as well: the waiting list for motions passed at PB4P meetings. Whatever happens to the little dears? The last PB4P meeting was four weeks ago, plenty of time to write a letter or email. I will find out tonight and the SWP can explain why they have problems with Women having full civil rights in Islamic Countries. I have downloaded various comments by SWP members from Indymedia and will circulate them at the meeting so their usual lies will be rather diificult to sustain.

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Public forum on the health crisis

Comments (2 of 2)