KERRY ELDERLY VICTIMISED BY GOVERNMENT SLEIGHT OF HAND
Issued : Monday 26 July, 2010
The failure to open a community hospital in Co Kerry this week means older people are again being victimised by the Government’s ongoing sleight of hand over public spending.
The HSE’s failure to open the new elderly accommodation unit for 43 patients at Dingle Community Hospital next Tuesday is the latest example of a spending promise not being kept.
Last year we saw the Government accept Labour’s proposals to boost spending on school buildings and home insulation grants.
But a lot of the money was not actually spent meaning people who could have been working were kept on the dole and the social benefits were not fully obtained.
Now it has happened again in Dingle. The excuse that the hospital does not meet standards set by Hiqa, which was set up by the Department of Health, suggests the left hand does not know what the right hand is doing.
But I believe a deeper deceit is at play. The Government has created an elaborate bureaucracy in the health service so that the left hand can stop what the right hand is doing in order to save money.
This allows ministers refer to spending plans as though action is being taken to develop services when in fact it is not.
This has happened countless times in the provision of community-based residential, care and treatment facilities for a range of service users and patients many of whom are elderly. This is the latest example.
The HSE knew the standards required for Dingle Community hospital when construction started two years ago. The matron of the hospital said at the time that facilities were being built with the comfort of older people in mind. And less than month ago the HSE confirmed the opening date would be next Tuesday.
So it is simply not credible that it has only just discovered that the hospital cannot now meet the required standards on time and has no timeline for doing so.
This is yet another example of how tax breaks worth hundreds of millions of euro to those who want to make profits from healthcare are being paid for by service users."
