Enough of Harney picking over the nation's carcass!

Few Ministers have presided for as long as Mary Harney in the history of the state. She’s spent 12 years in office continuously and add to that the period that she spent as a successful Junior Minister at Environment where she pioneered smokeless fuel. Her senior at the time was Padraig Flynn and the pair were nickname Smog n’ Smug!
When Harney transferred to Health in 2004 she told us that she’d bring her business like approach to health and shorten waiting lists, improve services and give us a first class health service. After the latest scandal at Tallaght Hospital she’s no nearer her goal than she was over 5 years ago when she took up the job. In 2005 she said she wanted a 7 year stint to complete her job. Her optimism is groundless, she’s brought us no nearer a better health service. It’s about time we as a nation heeded her advice from another issue and shopped around for another Health Minister.

She really has a dreadful record, Missed diagnosis at Port Laoise, Galway, Limerick, Hospital closures in Monaghan, Ennis, Dundalk as well as the infamous reconfiguration of the Mid-West, North East, South, and South East, the Co Location financing of private hospitals, PPARS, Failure to regulate the nursing home sector, A&E charge doubling in the last 5 years and all the time physiotherapy and psychological services for children services are long fingered as Ms Harney hones her taste for foreign travel. Her constant companion in clocking up the air miles is her FAS veteran husband. What happens in Vegas stays in Vegas, particularly if your on a waiting list for surgery on a vegas nerve.

The ire of most people is kept for her creation , HSE. Patients are glad of a service and appreciate the work done on wards, in operating theatres and clinics up and down the country. What they want to see is more. We are told that Ireland is striving towards best international practise and that at the end the HSE will be held up as a model for other small countries, consultant led teams treating patients in modern speciality hospitals. What we’ve mostly got so far is duplication of management and a Minister who fundamentally cannot distinguish between a social economy and a market. Since 2005 civil servants in the Health Department mirror the HSE employees who work in brand new offices on the Millennium Park HSE complex, leased from her good friend by tax payers. Amid the chaos Harney refers question on health the political section of the HSE. When the Head of the HSE Professor Drumm goes to meet TD’s its bedlam as about 100 deputies try to question him about the implications of his decisions in their own area in a limited amount of time.


I’m fed up with those who run our health system stumbling from crisis to crisis. Where will it be next month? Can we afford any longer Harney’s clichés? Fair deal or “If it was just a question of money it’d be solved by now”. The sad reality is that Harney has demoralised the staff and frightened the general public into an expectation of poor standards in our hospitals. The reality is otherwise. Recently one of my children broke their arm. I went to Wexford General Hospital at 5 PM. My son was x-rayed, diagnosed, treated and referred to a fracture clinic within 2 hours. There are good experiences in our health services to be had in spite of the quality of leadership at top.

So what is the way forward? The genie is out of the bottle, accountability is gone, every day Wexford gets closer to a re-configuration that will mean the service delivery in the South East is regionally based rather than local. If there is a change of government in the morning this roll out won’t change because management have been given control of delivery. It’s reconfiguration or nothing!

The forthcoming re-shuffle is fundamentally different to what Ahern did in 2004 when he morphed into a socialist who broke bread with Fr Sean Healey. That transformed FF in the polls and set them up for 2007. The forthcoming reshuffle is predicated against taxpayers being taken to the cleaners to keep bankers, developers and FF in clover. The most potent expression “There’s no NAMA for me” says it all. There’ll be no bailout for FF, Harney and the Greens.
Enough is enough, The health minister should return from New Zeeland to take control of the latest crisis. Then Harney should be shown the door at the reshuffle, accountability has to start.

McCreevy carpeting well earned

I’ve often wondered why Charlie McCreevy is so contemptuous of Europe. It’s quite sometime since as Finance Minster McCreevy was criticised by the EU for overspending in the domestic economy and he quipped that he was bringing back the bars of gold to Brussels. The reason why he was dispatched to the EU Commission is simple his arrogant style had become a liability to Bertie Ahern by 2004. He was blamed for loosing the 2004 local elections when he swiftly undid al the 2002 General Eelction promises despite saying that no cuts secret or otherwise were being planned at a time when civil servants were internally worried at the affect of the FF government’s election promises on spending.
The nadir for McCrevey was his ill judged appearance on the Late Late Show when he was booed by the audience. Ahern’s decision to shift him was the low point in his political career. McCreevy has always displayed his contempt of anyone with an intellectual view. His famous description of his critics as left wing pinkos was contrasts with his revelation that he believed Bertie Ahern was one of only 2 socialists in the Dail. Unfortunately for McCreevy he now finds himself in a place where there’s more socialists than there are horse breeders in his native Kildare.

McCreevy was given the portfolio in the commission of regulating the internal market. An attractive job for someone, who ideologically favours the free market over direct intervention by the state. On one famous occasion in Wexford he asked a fellow FF TD asking for state support for a local tourist project “Do you think I’m the downtown office for the St Vincent de Paul? On another occasion as EU Commissioner he snubbed a powerful cross party committee to attend Cheltenham McCreevy now however is swimming with the sharks. A letter has been sent to his boss Jose Manuel Barosso protesting at McCreevy’s failure to bring forward the changes sought by parliament to stem the collapse in the EU economy. When McCreevy was dealing with an equestrian centre in his own constituency at Punchestown he strangely acted with extraordinary haste and dynamism. Now when there’s real issues at stake he’s somewhat less energetic. McCreevy dooes not understand the function of hedge funds and private equity companies like the sort he flogged off Eircom to. He fails to understand that they resemble betting even though he’s an avid racegoer himself.
The reason is McCreevy’s ideological view as set out last September “I don’t believe it is necessary at this stage to tar hedge funds and private equity with the same brush as we use for the regulated sector. The issues relating to the current turmoil are different,” “Let me be clear: The EU economy is going to need massive investment in the time ahead. Without sovereign wealth funds; private equity and the like, Europe’s recovery from today’s turmoil will be all the slower,” This however is not to the liking of senior socialists and some Christian Democrats who’ve taken the matter to Barosso.
What worries me is that this failed libertarian logic is the same nonsense that W has signed up to. Thankfully the US people have seen through this guff and while January will see a new broom in Washington, we’ll have to wait a year for McCreevy to be put out to grass on The Curragh. McCreevy famously confessed he hadn’t read the Lisbon Treaty and this gaffe helped lose the referendum. When the result was put to him he said that the result must be respected and the Irish had that right. No one disputed that however he was supposedly involved in an area that the treaty was impacting on, could it be that his right wing views felt there was too much regulation involved? McCreevy’s problem is that in the wider scheme of European politics the begorrah cute ring wing hoor approach doesn’t cut the mustard!
This is the guy who we’re supposedly determined to keep in the commission by Lisbon 2. I wonder is it worth the bother would we not be better served by an EU socialist rather than a Irish free market liberal? I’m reminded by a quote from the late Dan Spring, “there’s many a man talked himself out of a good job!.” Has McCreevy grown tired of Europe and does he not want a second term? The word is that Mary Harney or Noel Dempsey have been promised the job at the end of 2009. Clearly one wonders about his appetite (as Brian Cowen would say) going forward!