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The Saker

Indymedia ireland

Indymedia Ireland is a volunteer-run non-commercial open publishing website for local and international news, opinion & analysis, press releases and events. Its main objective is to enable the public to participate in reporting and analysis of the news and other important events and aspects of our daily lives and thereby give a voice to people.

offsite link Army Sergeant Travis Decker Murdered His Three Children After Being Denied Mental Health Care at JBL... Sat Jun 07, 2025 04:52 | JBLM Whistleblowers
A corrupt military police force and incompetent Commander who denied emergency mental health care and crisis counseling to an American service member resulted in the murder of the sergeant's three young daughters

offsite link Gaza doctor grieves her nine children killed in Israeli strike Sun May 25, 2025 20:00 | imc
Israeli regime continues it's slaughter
'The children were completely charred'

Paediatrician Alaa al-Najjar was treating victims of Israeli attacks when her children were killed by an Israeli strike on their home

offsite link British doctors working in Gaza describe territory as a ?slaughterhouse? Sat May 24, 2025 00:23 | imc
There?s no food getting in so people are starving,? surgeon Tom Potokar says
British doctors working in Gaza have described the territory as a ?slaughterhouse,? where the patients they are treating are severely malnourished.

Plastic surgeons and orthopedic specialists from the UK are based at the Amal and Nasser hospitals in Khan Younis in the south of the territory.

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offsite link It is time to talk about the Out of Control Immigration. Mon Mar 31, 2025 22:12 | imc
For the last few years since the CV19 scamdemic undocumented immigration into Ireland has surged. No one is allowed discuss it because they do not want any rational debate about it. If you do you are labelled an extremist. However this out of control immigration is fully facilitated by the Irish government and the EU and the shady figure behind the Neo Con movement pushing for endless war, wokeism and globalist agenda.

offsite link [Dublin] National Demonstration for Palestine: End Israeli Apartheid & Genocide Thu Mar 06, 2025 22:35 | ipsc
Sat, 22 March 2025, 13:00 Assemble at the Garden of Remembrance, Parnell Square, Dublin 1
The Ireland-Palestine Solidarity Campaign, supported by over 150 Irish civil society organisations, has called another National Demonstration for Palestine on Saturday 22nd March.

The march will begin at the Garden of Remembrance at 1pm and finish outside the D?il on Molesworth Street/Kildare Street to bring our demands to the Irish government?s doorstep.

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Public Inquiry
Interested in maladministration. Estd. 2005

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Voltaire Network
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Anger as Cork health workers fight on two fronts ...

category cork | worker & community struggles and protests | news report author Friday September 26, 2008 15:49author by Peter Sullivan Report this post to the editors

Cork hospitals are under attack with major cuts planned ... Meanwhile Beacon Medical Group's planned 'Co-location' hospital in Cork draws nearer. It would seem like high-time to call in the union and put manners on a few people ... but where is Joe?
The only remaing hosptial on Cork's Northside
The only remaing hosptial on Cork's Northside

Anger as Cork health workers fight on two fronts ...

The anger of health workers in Cork reached near boiling point at a meeting on Wednesday night hosted by the Campaign For A Real Health Service. The meeting, at Cork’s Imperialist Hotel, was called to highlight the planned construction of a private hospital by the Beacon Medical Group ( see http://www.wsm.ie/internal_article/3620 ) on the crowded grounds of Cork’s University Hospital. While the speakers addressed the issue of the Mary Harney’s so-called “Colocation” strategy and the dangers it poses to the already over-stretched public health services, workers from the Cork’s St Mary’s Orthopaedic Hospital spoke with passion and anger about the current efforts to downgrade the facility. Much of the anger was directed at the HSE and its bumbling head, Brendan Drum, but special mention was also made of the attitude and inaction of SIPTU’s full time official, Joe O’Callaghan.

The Orthopaedic is the last remaining hospital on Cork’s North Side. It is set on large spacious grounds and is renowned for the quality of its care. Despite widespread opposition, Brendan Drum is intent on cutting services at the hospital. Earlier this month staff at the hospital were informed about ‘possible changes’ at the hospital. Drum’s main target is the key orthopaedic services which he is intent on moving across town to the already overburdened CUH. Although the move is opposed by doctors at the hospital, Drum has made it plain that as with the Mercy hospital, the Orthopaedic’s days as an operational hospital are numbered. Apart from the damage to patient care there are well over two hundred and fifty jobs also at stake.

At the root of the ongoing rearrangement in hospital services in the Cork city area is a bold attempt by Drum and his cronies to cut costs and save money. There is a widespread suspicious among those in the know that the HSE intends to sell off a large section of the land on which the Orthopaedic is located if it is allowed to succeed with its plan. This is prime building land and has been on the radar of beady-eyed speculators for quite some time. A further scenario includes the prospect that a section of the Orthopaedic will in due course actually be turned over to a consortium intent on re-opening a new private ‘orthopaedic’ facility to meet the ‘for profit’ health care market.

What emerged clearly at Wednesday night’s meeting was that the struggle in the health service in Cork is now reaching a crisis. Cutbacks are underway in the Mercy Hospital, where a long standing issue has been the failure of the hospital to open a new A & E (see http://www.indymedia.ie/article/87804 ) remains unresolved. Now also the Orthopaedic is threatened. All of this is happening as the last rubber stamp (An Bord Pleanála) is put on the Beacon Medical Group’s planned private hospital to be ‘co-located’ at CUH in the Wilton area of Cork. Although Beacon is an Irish company (see www.beaconmedicalgroup.ie ) the actual 175 bed hospital will be run for it by the “for profit” US health Care giant, University of Pittsburgh Medical Center (www.upmc.com ). Don’t be misled by the name, UPMC is a business not a centre for teaching and learning.

For Beacon, making money will never come as easy as it will for them in this project. Not only are they availing of huge Government grants for the construction phase, but they will also, once operational, avail of the CUH’s publically funded facilities and resources. Beacon will also have ready access to the multitude of consultants at CUH (paid generously from the public purse). On Wednesday these same consultants, aware of the lucrative windfall that is likely to come their way via co-location, ‘strongly backed” the BMG at the Bord Pleanála hearing.

Against this scenario workers at the Orthopaedic spoke in anger of their efforts to date to fight the privatisation moves and cutbacks. However they are fighting on two fronts – not only against the HSE but also against their own SIPTU branch official – none other than Joe O’Callaghan. O’Callaghan, who is also a Fine Gael councillor (we kid you not), was almost always ‘at a meeting’ when anyone from his branch called Connolly Hall for looking for him during the past week. You would think Joe would see the importance of this issue, but hell no ... Joe is too busy at with other matters! It was pointed out that he never returns calls and on a few occasions has chastised SIPTU workers for speaking to the media over his head. The most serious allegation levelled at O’Callaghan had to do with the fact that he was reputed to be on holidays in Turkey as the Orthopaedic closure was announced. It was also alleged that he was on holidays with one of the managers from the Orthopaedic! Could it be true?

The strength of feeling about the dire situation was such that a number of contributors spoke of the need for health workers in Cork City to organise for themselves and to make contact with other health workers in order to tackle the grave situation. It was also stated by a numbers to trade unionists that it is high time that trade union members took their unions back from the full time officials who are acting as a law unto themselves. As was pointed out by one able speaker from the floor, the union is its members NOT its officials. Further meeting are planned to act on this initiative so watch this space.

The Orthopaedic is renowned for it the quality of its care
The Orthopaedic is renowned for it the quality of its care

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