How Fianna Fail spent your bin taxes -and 9 billion Euros more!

national | politics / elections | news report

Monday April 26, 2004 11:12

by John McDErmott - Remove Fianna Fail Party(and elect a monkey)

Ashtown Dublin

If Dublin Zoo was in pin striped suits ,in the Dail ,it would cost less.

Fianna Fail garbage trucks have been discovered emptying litter bags full of soiled Euro banknotes in select locations (mostly hospital sites)throughout Ireland,.. .(to ensure re-election of their local county councillors)

How Fianna Fail spent 9 billion of your bin taxes(not all of it goes into their back pockets!) The Health Service Survey,of Dr Sean Barrett-a Trinity College economist-,recently published ;is a shocking indictment of a Fianna Fail government which will surely be remembered for its unprecedented and systematic network of organized corruption;-its chameleon like mastery of the art of “public relations” and deception;- its astounding bluff and arrogance in the face of exposure;and its utter incompetence in managing the Nations affairs,whether it be infrastructure projects,public health,or just plain old waste disposal!
A falling birth rate - suggests we should be spending 40 per cent less than our total health spend of €9 billion on healthcare, according to a comparison of healthcare systems by the Fraser Institute in Canada. Only six staff in every 100 employed in the health service are medical and dental personnel.
Irish medical personnel are paid up to three times as much as their counterparts in other EU states, according to the data extracted from Irish and international studies on the health service. The studies have found that a specialist medic in the Irish public health service is paid an average of €133,000, compared to €43,200 in Finland, an economy with broadly the same overall income per head as Ireland.
There are nearly four times more practising nurses here per 1,000 of the population than in Britain, and nearly double the number per 1,000 than the United States. The number of nurses in Ireland has increased by 17 per cent since 1997, to 31,000. However, over the same period, the number of bed nights in hospitals has increased by only 4 per cent, according to Barrett.
The Trinity College economist, who was a member of the Brennan Commission on health service reform, was scathing about the lack of systems to develop cost consciousness and lack of incentives to manage costs effectively.
"The cost of the health service - at €9 billion - is up 125 per cent over six years, and the numbers employed have jumped by 47 per cent," said Barrett. "Yet there has only been a 4 per cent increase in in-patient discharges over the same period."
Ireland's spending on health is now higher than any major European economy on a per capita basis.
It ought not be lost on the electorate that some 40% of them are also paying, double digit-yearly price escalating, private health insurance.
They are, in effect, a cow being milked twice ,-on public taxation,and private desperation!(V.H.I).The abundance of new” stealth taxes,”besides!
The most despairing fact in all of this is the absolute lack of a credible alternative coalition government to the Fianna Fail/P.D Alliance.
It is indeed a Dark Age for Politics in the small Nation of Ireland.How dare Bertie Ahearn lecture us about” the need to pay for services”
Its akin to a mugger, telling his victim, that he is obliged to pay for his Heroin habit -or a bank robber telling the account holders that they must finance his extravagant lifestyle!