Build a REAL health services campaign

On Saturday June 7th over 1,000 people took part in a Demonstration in Drogheda protesting against the closure of the Dochas Centre, a cancer care unit at the Lourdes Hospital.

The protest, which was addressed by local Fine Gael, Labour and Sinn Fein public representatives, was the culmination of months of work by the local Save Our Cancer Unit (SOCU) group, and commanded much regional and national media attention. The successful protest march was then followed up on Wednesday afternoon June 25th with a rally outside Dail Eireann. Meanwhile hundreds of Drogheda people have been signing a petition, at weekend stalls organised by the Socialist Party in the town opposing the cancer unit closure and calling for a halt to the destruction of Ireland’s public health service.

The SOCU and Socialist Party initiatives clearly demonstrate that masses of ordinary people are more than willing to give of their own time to stand up and fight for a decent health service. The same, however, can’t be said of the political establishment in Co. Louth, so much so that after their Dail protest the SOCU group issued a press statement expressing disappointment that only one of Louth’s four TDs joined them at Leinster House.

SOCU spokesperson Anna Kelly told the local press “Arthur Morgan TD (SF) took the opportunity to meet with us however we are disappointed that our other elected representatives could not or would not find the time to discuss our legitimate concerns”. Ms. Kelly said that Louth Fianna Fail’s Dermot Ahern (Minister for Justice) and Seamus Kirk TD “hadn’t even responded to any of our letters, phone calls or e-mails”.

Louth’s other TD, Fine Gael’s Fergus O’Dowd, publicly hit out at the group in the local press claiming that he made SOCU aware that “he would be out of the country on Dail business”, a clear indication that the Drogheda’-based TD prefers all expenses paid quangos rather than representing the interests of his constituents. Ms Kelly told the press that the orgainisers were “only made aware the night before” that O’Dowd would not be meeting them.

It was inevitable that these politicians, having used the SOCU campaign as a cynical photo opportunity, would have their “fully signed up” support for the Government’s so-called Centres of Excellence policy on the health service eventually exposed. This policy entails the wholesale closure of local hospitals, and hospital services, in favour of centralising hospitals around a handful of carefully selected and politically strategic population centres. Even the Labour Party totally support what they see as this “value for government money” approach.

The Socialist Party hope, given the lack of real and meaningful support from Co. Louth’s cross-party political establishment, that Drogheda’s Lourdes Hospital workers, the local trade union movement and every residents organisation in the town will get behind the SOCU group to create a genuinely broad-based community campaign that, by sheer weight of public opinion, will simply bypass the two-faced local “official” political establishment. It will only be in the face of a virtual civil uprising in Drogheda that a total re-think on the part of the HSE, and the town’s political elite, will be contemplated as regards the Lourdes Hospital’s Dochas cancer care centre.