Report from End the recruitment freeze demo
dublin |
worker & community struggles and protests |
news report 
Monday April 21, 2008 14:49
by Labour Youth
There was a lively protest last Wednesday outside the Department of health about the ongoing cutbacks in public healthcare that the government are driving through to faciliate privatisation.
Health science students and members of Labour Youth took part in the demonstration which received coverage in the O Reilly press.
The recruitment ban has led to:
A crisis in Accident and Emergency
Public health patients waiting in pain on hospital waiting lists while others can buy healthcare that everyone is entitled to
A skills drain from Ireland with trained healthcare graduates forced to emigrate to find employment
At the same time the government is giving lucrative tax breaks to wealthy corporations to build private hospitals on public grounds. They are deliberately causing a crisis in public health care to pave the way for privatisation.
The ban which was due to be lifted last December has remained in place in a number of areas, where the government is attempting to institutionalise cutbacks that were announced as temporary measures to stay in budget. Its a classic example of cutbacks by stealth, facilitating privatisation by stealth.
Comments (1 of 1)
Jump To Comment: 1Good to read of demo on the recruitment freeze. The increasing numbers of unemployed/underemployed physios/speech therapists and other medical professionals should mount a permanent picket on the Dept of Health until things change.
Next month c.1880 nurses graduate with little chance of work in Ireland. the govt increased nursing places by 50% some years ago when hospitals were desparately short of nurses. Overseas nurses were brought in until we could train more. Now we have the nurses, we dont employ them.
It would be logical to close down training places or drastically reduce them if we are not going to employ their graduates. Academics who lecture these young people should be out marching but they are not because their jobs are safe - their salaries come out of the Education budget, not the HSE's. If their jobs were on the line, they might speak out!
Meanwhile the HSE has been running big ads all year promoting their careers website and the 'challenge' of a career with the HSE. The challenge is to find a job on the website. Check out www.careersinhealthcare.ie Must have a big advertising budget!
HSE runs phone lines 8 am - 8 pm Mon - Sat to inform people about services they are entitled to. A black joke to spend money on this when the services are not there because they wont employ the staff ( whose training the taxpayer has funded.).
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