Heart Beat: The German Ambassador to Ireland, His Excellency Herr Christian Paul, has occasioned some comment, some adverse, some supportive, by a recent speech.
You're not supposed to notice what's going on around you, let alone talk about it, not even to your wife. Come to think of it, especially not to your wife. After all, we're not supposed to notice either and we live right here in Utopia.
Bits were very offensive, like that €200,000 "Mickey Mouse" salary for consultants. Highlighting poverty doctors was unnecessary, but we wouldn't be averse to accepting a "dig out" from our German colleagues, if you could arrange it.
It could be in euros, dollars, anything at all, and just between us of course.
But seriously now, wherever did you get the idea that our health services are chaotic? You must have been watching TV, listening to the radio, reading newspapers or talking to people; all acknowledged sources of misinformation.
Why can't you just float along and pretend everything is fine and that by 20** we'll have the best health service in the world. I am sorry about the two asterisks but the last two digits keep stretching into the future.
Why don't you come back here in 20 years and you'll find we won't have a single hospital bed left. The smoking ban will have abolished the need for half of them and our cancer screening will begin at birth and be yearly thereafter.
We'll diagnose it so early that a drop of holy water will cure it. The Drumm proposition that as the population ages and increases, we'll need fewer hospital beds will be accepted all over the world.
Of course we'll have loads of private hospitals by then but nobody will know what actually goes on in them. Don't you be writing or speaking now that they were built with the construction industry, rather than patients, in mind. You'll have to understand that we simply must keep building and that if we stop everything simply falls to the ground.
We know this to be so, from the many sermons of St Bertie to the developers. What happens, you may ask, when we've built everything conceivable under the laws of tax breaks? Now here's the really clever bit, quite beyond the imaginings of you stolid continentals.
We enter another phase of our prosperity cycle to be known as the demolition phase. We simply knock it all down and start again. Brilliant, isn't it? It's a wonder nobody thought of it before, but I suppose the rest of you are not lucky enough to live, governed by such enlightened elves.
Wherever did you get the idea that we could be coarse? Did you never hear tell of the Island of Saints and Scholars? I suppose you must have spent an hour or two in Dublin Airport without your ear plugs. Many of the words you may have heard are really old Irish words denoting sweetness and light. Granted to the uninitiated they may sound otherwise and such folk may even misinterpret the pious prayers and invocations to the Deity heard on all sides continuously.
You left me once again with a feeling that I am missing out on something with your remarks about '06 and '07 cars. My little car is '02, so obviously my fellow citizens are doing better than I am, and I fear I may be turning into a classical Irish begrudger.
And €20 million for the house in Clontarf versus the skyscraper in Frankfurt; what can I say about that? Nothing really, except that it must have had something to do with Brian Boru, a High King of ancient times and anyway the developer got a 200 per cent mortgage over a thousand years at 0 per cent interest from some Northern Pebble place.
Lastly, and in great sorrow, I ask this. How could you draw attention to the fact that even our Junior ministers earn even more than your Chancellor? The dismissive answer to that is simply in the words of the Parisian cosmetic advertisement "because they're worth it". No evidence need be adduced of course but if required we could profer benchmarking and similar fog-inducing phrases.
Lastly we could fall back on productivity; I bet you that our Minister for Trolleys has far more of these articles in her jurisdiction than yours has.
Having written all this, I now learn that your translator screwed up and that wasn't what you really meant or said. Gosh! You're really learning in Ireland - that explanation could have come straight from Willie O'Dea.
The radio behind me tells me of cuts in front-line services in Sligo - in breast surgery, orthopaedics and ENT. Why am I not surprised?
The finance elf tells us that harder times may be a-coming and that we must cut back on current expenditure, ie health education, etc and concentrate on the National Development Plan (Limerick excluded of course). More decentralisation, more roads, co-located hospitals; we'll be building follies next. Mercutio in Romeo and Juliet:
I talk of dreams
Which are the children of an idle brain
Begat of nothing but vain fantasy
Some weeks ago I expressed doubts about the prospects for the consultant contract negotiations. My forebodings come to fruition over just about every issue in contention.
Very significantly is the reintroduction of a gagging clause to prevent hospital consultants speaking out to highlight the disgraceful and worsening shortfalls in the service. This comes from the same people who talk about legislation to protect whistleblowers.
Is it just that they have no shame or do they think everybody is stupid?
Maurice Neligan is a cardiac surgeon.