Reilly-Shortall row highlights primary care scandal

When this row broke out between James Reilly and Róisín Shotall it was obvious that there was deep dysfunction at the helm of our health services. That has been borne out with the resignation of Roisín Shortall.
In her resignation statement she said: "The public have a right to expect that decisions on health infrastructure and staffing will be made in the public interest based on health need and not driven by other concerns."
The Minister added 15 primary care centres to the original list of 20; two of the 15 are in his own constituency. He added new criteria to the criteria based on urban and rural deprivation. He claims these new criteria are : existing health facilities; GP to population ratio; Pressures on services, particularly Acute Services; Funding options, including exchequer funded (HSE) build or lease, and implementability of a PPP (size, site and scale). But he hasn’t told us how these criteria match the chosen locations.
And, clearly, he failed to satisfy his own Primary Care junior Minister Róisín Shortall that his criteria for choosing locations were correct. Again to quote Róisín Shortall in her Dáil speech last week: “Decisions on where staff are allocated and where primary care centres are located must be transparent and objective based on health need and no other consideration.”
There is another issue here which has got little attention. Minister Reilly is proposing to develop these centres by Public-Private Partnership only. In her Dáil speech Róisín Shortall said that primary care centres, just like schools, are essential public infrastructure and should be provided on the same basis. We agree with that.
Instead Minister Reilly is determined to continue the policy of his predecessor Mary Harney of developing primary care centres by public private partnership (PPP) only, thus allowing developers and vested interests in private healthcare – which he knows a little about himself - to have undue influence.
We have seen in the Comptroller & Auditor General report this week the millions of  public money squandered on PPPs  that have never materialised – including €4.1 million for radiation oncology that is now to be provided directly – a scandalous waste.

Sinn Féin asked Minister Reilly in the Dáil this week if he has an up to date cost benefit analysis of primary care centre development by PPP as against development by HSE - he failed to answer the question. 
The bottom line is that the public need these primary care centres – and they need to be provided not in the interest of developers or GPs or anyone else but in the interest of patients.

The Household Charge & the Coalition's attack on Local Democracy

I am publishing here in full the letter received today by all Dublin City Councillors telling us of the cuts to funding for the Council being imposed by Minister Phil Hogan. They have tied local government funding to the unjust and uncollectable Household Charge.

Funding for Dublin and other councils is being slashed for the rest of 2012 based on the extent of non-payment of the Household Charge in our Council area.

This is pure bully-boy tactics from the Fine Gael-Labour Government. An unjust tax which was brought in by central government, not by councils, the Household Charge is being boycotted by around half of Dublin City households. Because the figure for those paying includes property owners with multiple properties, the real proportion of actual home-owners is not reflected in the 66% payment figure for Dublin City.

Nearly €4.7 million is to be slashed from Dublin City Council's Budget by Hogan. This will hit vital services such as housing, environment, roads, community services etc. It is a disgraceful development and was only revealed this week by Hogan because the Dáil goes into recess for the summer and so the Fine Gael/Labour regime hopes to minimise opposition. It is exactly what we in Sinn Féin said would happen when the Household Charge was imposed. But this attack on Local Democracy must and will be opposed.

To each Member of Dublin City Council

20th July, 2012

Re:      Local Government Fund Allocations 2012

Dear Councillor

I attach a copy of Circular 09/2012.  This has obvious implications for the Budget for the current year and we will discuss this at the September Council meeting.

In the interim, we will review options to align spending commitments to funding resources.

Yours sincerely,

_____________

John Tierney

City Manager

Circular Fin 09/2012

Manager

Dublin City Council

LGF General Purpose Allocations 2012

A Chara,

I am directed by the Minister for the Environment, Community and Local Government to advise you of the approach to payments to be made in respect of the provisional General-Purpose Grant allocation from the Local Government Fund for Dublin City Council for the year 2012. 

In considering the approach to the 3^rd quarter GPG payment, the Minister has taken the following into account:

• the overall level of funds available in the Local Government Fund;
• the level of household charge compliance achieved to date;
• the position of individual local authorities in terms of scale and financial resilience; and
• the objective of providing general purpose grants to authorities that enable them to provide a reasonable level of service to their communities.

The approach adopted in each case takes account of relative household charge compliance while not seeking to apply the full (current) level of shortfall.  While national and local information/compliance campaigns at political and official levels have been critical to the compliance levels achieved to date, this approach recognises that the administrative follow-up by individual local authorities (based on the data-sharing work) will now only begin to have a real bearing on the remaining compliance levels in local authority areas.  Furthermore, this allows for local authorities to progressively recoup their original GPG allocation through improved household charge compliance.

   

Details of the basis for the calculation of your revised grant are set out below.

Revised 2012 Allocations

The revised allocation for Dublin City Council consists of the following elements:

• the original allocation of €54,805,761;
• less €4,691,839 reflecting an adjustment based on the level of compliance achieved to date of  66%.

25% of the above deduction will be offset against the Q3 payment (see summary table below).  The final amount of General-Purpose Grants available for 2012 will be revisited and reviewed in Quarter 4 to take account of the financial position including progress on securing an increased household charge yield.

Local authorities are reminded of the requirement to achieve a balanced budget, taking into account the reduced income, and should reforecast expenditure for the remainder of the year to achieve balance.

Pension Related Deductions (PRD) reconciliation

An adjustment has been made to the Quarter 3 payment to reflect the final reconciliation of Pension Related Deductions (PRD) 2009 – 2011.

The adjustment in respect of pension related deductions is 376,632.

Quarter 3 payment

	€
GPG Q3 (based on original allocation)	13,701,440
Less Household Charge adjustment	1,172,960
Less Advance
Pension related deduction adjustment	376,632
Actual Q3 payment	12,905,113

Any queries in respect of this letter should be made to Emma Reeves at Emma.Reeves@environ.ie or 053 911 7417.

Mise, le meas,

Colm Lavery

Principal Officer

Local Government Finance

Enda's Vision of Hell on Top of Croagh Patrick

Enda Kenny recently climbed Croagh Patrick. This is the result.

My name it is Enda and I’m here to send a

Most terrible warning to you one and all

In this plebiscite you have to vote right

Or this land into Hell-fire it surely will fall.

Take heed when I threaten and don’t be forgettin’

The words that I speak from the County Mayo

For the end will come soon, so prepare for your doom

If the people of Ireland they dare to vote No.

On Croagh Patrick I’m standing and a creature is landing

Out there in Clew Bay and his wings they are black

His eyes are red coals and he’s hunting for souls

It’s the Divil himself and he’s here to attack.

He’s gathering sinners - especially Shinners -

For satanic rites never known in Mayo

Your souls will be toasted, your hearts will be roasted

If the Divil prevails and the people vote No.

The sharks will surround you, the ocean will drown you

And icebergs will sink every ship in the sea

The mountains will shake and the bogs they will quake

Volcanoes will burst from Carnsore to Kilkee.

The sky will fall earthward and suffocate Jedward

With arsenic and sulphur the rivers will flow

Six-kilo hailstones will fall down and break bones

If you secretly mark the square box that says No.

All your teeth will fall out, you’ll be riddled with gout

Your head full of lice and your bed full of fleas

Soup kitchens and breadlines from Rooskey to Rathmines

Plague, pestilence, pox and the Black Death disease.

No song you’ll be croonin’ when you meet Michael Noonan

Down a dark lane in Limerick as you freeze in the snow

Your eye he will pocket and come back for the socket

If you dare to defy us and choose to vote No.

The slave mentality

We have 30 days left to save what is left of economic sovereignty in Ireland, 30 days to ensure that the Fine Gael/Labour Government does not succeed in putting failed austerity policies into the Constitution, 30 days to defeat an Austerity Treaty that means more cuts, more stealth taxes, more unemployment and more emigration.

The campaign has hardly begun and already the 'Yes' side are resorting to their customary threats and bullying. This afternoon Finance Minister Michael Noonan threatened an even more savage budget in 2013  if the people vote 'No'.

The big stick being wielded by the 'Yes' side, of course, is that if we vote 'No' we will not have access to further emergency funding from the European Union. Where does this threat come from? The Government says this is in another Treaty, the ESM Treaty. But the fact is that this Treaty has not yet been approved by the Irish Government and has not come into effect. This ESM Treaty, if approved, would make ESM funding conditional on us approving the Austerity Treaty.

So, the threat is a bogus threat because the Government itself has the ability to block and veto the very source of the threat - the proposed ESM Treaty. Yet this Fine Gael/Labour Coalition wants the ESM Treaty to go ahead as is and to get the people to approve the Austerity Treaty. It's crackers.

Did they not even consider delaying the referendum until later this year in order to get a better deal? The Treaty may well be changed anyway as there is growing opposition to it across Europe. And it is far more likely that it will be changed or scrapped altogether if we vote 'No'. But if we vote 'Yes' we will be tying this Government and future Governments to austerity policies of drastic cuts to public services and huge tax increases for many years to come.

How could a Government be so submissive and so incompetent as to take such a position? Where was their backbone? The truth is it was removed years ago. Fine Gael and Labour have been bowing the knee to Brussels to decades. They never question anything that comes from the European Commission or the powerful EU member states. Remember the Lisbon Treaty when they told us 'Vote Yes for Jobs'? Where are the jobs?

I believe their submissive attitude goes far deeper, especially in the case of Fine Gael. There is within Fine Gael a strand of slavishness that goes back to the days of the West Britons, people who bent the knee to the British when they ruled Ireland from Dublin Castle. That was confirmed last weekend when a former Taoiseach and Fine Gael leader, John Bruton, unveiled a plaque at Woodenbridge, Co. Wicklow. Incredibly, this plaque was to commemorate the place where in 1914 Irish Parliamentary Party leader John Redmond made a speech urging the Irish Volunteers to join the British Army. Thousands did so, persuaded by Redmond to fight for the British Empire and then dying in a futile war between the kings, warlords and capitalists of Europe.

There was always a Redmondite strand in Fine Gael but what of the Labour Party that claims the legacy of James Connolly? They are on the coat-tails of Fine Gael, once again urging the Irish people to abandon their rights and sacrifice themselves for the good of the wealthy and powerful in Europe.

Give them all their answer - Vote 'No'.

John Redmond urging the Irish to join the British Army.

Fine Gael/Labour assault on Local Democracy

More than half of those liable have not paid the Household Charge and thousands of them took to the streets on Saturday 31 March to converge on the Fine Gael Ard Fheis and tell Phil Hogan and co. that enough is enough.

Already we can see the latest line of attack in response from the Fine Gael/Labour Coalition. They are going to try to blame those of us campaigning against the Household Charge for the crisis in funding for local government. It was this Government which slashed funding for local councils in Budget 2012. They then linked local government funding directly to the unjust and uncollectable Household Charge. This creates a major shortfall for local authority finances, threatening existing jobs and services. It is a massive con job and it is citizens, once again, who will suffer.

When we were considering the 2012 budget for Dublin City Council last year the Governmen had still not made clear how the Household Charge would work and what its relation to local government funding would be. We asked if it was the case that a shortfall in collection of the charge would mean a shortfall in local government funding. The Council management was far from clear on this. But the Government's Budget 2012 cut €166 million from the Local Government Fund, with the shortfall to be made up from the collection of the Household Charge. Because of this charge we voted against the Council's 2012 Budget.

So now, unless the Government introduces a Supplementary Budget for Local Government, we face the loss of vital services and jobs. This is nothing less than an assult on local democracy by Fine Gael and the Labour Party. And to add insult to injury, today in the Sunday Times, FG European Affairs Minister Lucinda Creighton has attacked local authorities for not puling their weight in collecting the charge. To add to the threats to householders of fines or even jail, we now have our councils being threatened - "Collect this tax because we're not going to fund your services any other way" say Hogan's Anti-Heroes in FG and Labour.

Local government is being forced into crisis. The only way to halt this is to repeal the Household Charge and to introduce a Supplementary Budget to fund councils and maintain existing services and jobs in 2012.

Make no mistake, we do need a better way of funding local government. That can be done centrally by reforming the tax system, taxing wealth and increasing the Local Government Fund which goes to local authorities. Or it can be done by bringing in a fair form of local taxation based on ability to pay and on wealth. Or a combination of both. There is no shortage of ideas but of course this Government and its predecessors would do anything but make the rich pay more so they impose the regressive Household Charge.

It is important that unity is maintained in the campaign to defeat the charge. We should not allow the Government to divide those who have paid and those who have not paid. All should be welcome in the drive to abolish Hogan's Tax. 

Cllr. Larry O'Toole, Brian Stanley TD (SF Spokesperson on Local Government) and myself at the launch of Sinn Féin's Bill to repeal the Household Charge.

Reclaiming our country

First of all, thanks to all who attended Sinn Féin's public meeting in Kilbarrack (above) last Thursday 15th March, and especially to our excellent speakers. The meeting heard powerful testimony of the impact of cuts and charges and the failure of the political system on our communities. But it also heard calls to action and a message of hope.

Local community activist Cathleen O'Neill of Kilbarrack Community Development Programme spoke of the anger at the imposition of the Household Charge and this was one of the main themes of the meeting. Cathleen said that she is not paying this unjust tax and cited the scandal of the continuing payment of billions to Anglo-Irish Bank bond-holders while the low paid and the unemployed are punished by the Fine Gael/Labour Government.

Edward Matthews, Industrial Relations Officer of the Irish Nurses and Midwives Organisation in North Dublin - covering the North city and county - gave a hard-hitting account of what the health cuts mean for citizens. This includes not only over-crowded emergency departments and longer waiting lists for vital treatment in Beaumont and other hospitals, but also less care for older people with home help hours being cut and community nurses unable to provide the regular checks that they once could make to help ensure the safety of old people living alone.

Darren Kelly of the Priory Hall residents described their ordeal from the day they put their names down for the apartments until the present situation as they live in limbo and face possible bankruptcy. Scandalously, Minister Phil Hogan still refuses to meet the residents, spuriously claiming that he is prevented from doing so by continuing legal actions - even though the residents themselves are not in court.

Darren Kelly summed it all up well when he said that the residents had learned the need to campaign as they have been so badly let down by the State which allowed unscrupulous developer McFeeley to build such a disastrous complex as Priory Hall, and with the Government now refusing to intervene. "We have to reclaim our country, reclaim our Republic", said Darren.

This theme was taken up by Sinn Féin Deputy Leader Mary Lou  McDonald TD. She said she would not be paying the Household Charge. She spoke of the need for political action - this is not a time when anyone can leave politics to the politicians and people are getting active in their communities and around campaigns such as those against the Household Charge and the cuts to health and education. People power can make a difference as the Coalition's partial climb-down on cuts to disadvantaged schools has shown; that was a combination of action in the Dáil led by Sinn Féin and on the streets led by campaigning parents, pupils and teachers.

This was the first public meeting we had in the area since I was co-opted to Dublin City Council last May; I took the opportunty to thank all who have assisted me since then, especially Councillor Larry O'Toole, leader of our group on Dublin City Council. In summing up the meeting I reminded people that we will face many more years of cuts, unjust charges and mass unemployment if the EU Austerity Treaty is accepted - that's why we need a massive 'NO' vote in the referendum, whenever it is held.

Ní neart go cur le chéile - Unity is strength.

Emigration

The RDS this weekend

The emigrant ship a century ago

The great Irish language writer and republican Máirtín Ó Cadhain wrote a short story called 'An Bhliain 1912' ('The Year 1912') about how emigration so dominated the lives and the thoughts of the people of his native Conamara as it was denuded of its youth. "Typical of a race whose guardian angel was the American trunk, whose guiding star was the exile ship, whose Red Sea was the Atlantic" he wrote.

As we mark the centenaries of great events in Irish history in the coming decade it looks like we will also be repeating the history of emigration which was bleeding this nation a century ago. Words fail me as I look at the pictures of long lines of people entering the emigration exhibition in the RDS this weekend. And who needs irony or satire when we realise that the Fianna Fáil Ard Fheis was on in the same venue?

We know the reasons why this is happening. The Irish economy was wrecked by the greed of developers, speculators and bankers and their puppets in Government. And the 'solutions' being imposed by the Fine Gael-Labour Government and the EU are making unemployment worse. We are back to the situation where the true figures for joblessness are disguised by the numbers of people leaving our shores.

It's easy to become despondent in the face of this catastrophe which we have seen so many times before in our history. But it should spur us on to more determined political action. This is OUR country. Our young people should not have to abandon Ireland and leave their families and friends to find work abroad. There ARE alternatives to the futile austerity policies currently being imposed and Sinn Féin, among others, have put them forward. Sinn Féin by no means has a monopoly of wisdom but we do have proposals based on fostering sustainable economic growth and jobs. And we have the proven determination to struggle against inequality and injustice and for real change and a new Ireland.

So what should people do? They should become politically active in campaigns to defend their rights, in their communities, in trade unions, students unions, lobby groups, protests large and small. Challenge the political establishment. Demand change. Join Sinn Féin.

Emigration used to be called an economic safety valve. It was always more of a safety valve for the political establishment, with potentially radical young people forced out of Ireland. That must not happen again. It's much easier now for our emigrants to keep contact with home and to exercise some political clout. So, as well as demanding economic policies to create jobs and help stop emigration, we also need to campaign for emigrants to be given the right to vote. They have a role to play in the fightback.

We look forward to the day when they return to reclaim their country.