We know by now that corruption, incompetence, hypocrisy and cowardice are endemic among those who mismanage this country so the reaction of Minister for Health Mary Harney to the latest cancer scandal is to be expected. It is, however, worth putting her weasel words on record.
We had the usual waffle from her last Wednesday (News at One, 1st item) when the reports were published.
“The issue was always to ensure the patients came first…(yet another) apology to the victims…we must learn the lessons…must ensure it doesn’t happen again…what’s important now is the future…the media caused untold anxiety.”
Her solutions were nothing short of revolutionary –
We’ve got to have somebody in charge at a national level…very basic management tools have now got to be put in place.
She strongly rejected that suggestion that the HSE had become a monster that she and her colleagues had created. Given the level of her incompetence it’s difficult to tell whether she believes that the eleven old health boards were actually abolished and replaced with the HSE (See here for what really happened).
Everybody in the real world knows that the eleven health boards are still there, still fully staffed, still sucking countless millions out of the health system. Everybody knows that the creation of the HSE, the twelfth health board, was the moment the health system went out of control, the moment when the bureaucrats took over, the moment when the system became more important than the patients, the moment when it began to kill people.
In words that were never meant to be publicly aired, Harney told the truth to Rebecca O’Malley, a woman who was nearly killed by the system (Nine News, 1st item, 2nd report).
“You do know, don’t you; that it isn’t safe to go into any of our hospitals.”
The people of Ireland are in serious trouble and it is their own fault. They have a government that does not govern. And this should come as no surprise. Listening to Jim Glennon on the Marion Finucane show yesterday morning would make one despair. The system (which he retired from – I wonder why ?) is one where politicians in general have no stomach to lead the people but rather to become their slaves. Yes, yes I know democracy is supposed to be government BY the people but authority in Ireland has now broken down so much that we have a state of anarchy. Politicians are supposed to act with the authority of the people, not to be their lap dogs. Eamon De Valera ( who is going through somewhat of a re-appraisal) used to say “the people have no right to do wrong” and he was castigated for it. Much much later, the late John Healy captured Jack Lynch’s “leadership” in the following “there go the people, I am their leader, therefore I must follow”. The recent HSE debacle along with others show how right Healy was. Where everyone is responsible, no one is responsible and “everyone” now means all the people of Ireland not just the HSE staff or the Department of Health staff or the politicians.
Nothing short of a revolution will get us out of the mess we are in.