HEART BEAT:Those on high don't listen to the howlers outside their gates, writes Maurice Neligan
EVERYBODY SEEMS to have an opinion on our little bank guarantees and I suspect that many, like me, are not really qualified to do other than gasp and hope that it turns out alright.
My mother had a thing about borrowing and lending, which I think she got from Shakespeare. She definitely would not have approved, but then I don't suppose she would have known what a billion was.
There were none lying around our house. In so far as it goes, it comes under the heading of desperate times requiring desperate measures and I think we should all weigh in and support what appears to be in the national interest.
Robert Lowell wrote: "If we see light at the end of the tunnel, it's the light of the oncoming train."
Right now we can't see anything, but let's be optimistic. As I write, Gordon Brown is wondering if what has been done is consistent with EU rules. Always the best of Europeans, the British - and we must remember that over the centuries they have been most solicitous about our welfare.
We must thank Mr Brown for being so considerate in the midst of his own travails.
Apart from this potentially calamitous side show, the horizon still looks pretty dismal. Everybody knows - even the Government has finally awoken to some of the problems that confront us now, or will, in the immediate future.
They are bringing forward the Budget with all its anticipated goodies - and might I humbly suggest that they give serious consideration to advancing and prolonging Lent. I'm sure God wouldn't mind, as I think He has given us you lot as a kind of early Purgatory. Sackcloth and ashes will be decreed for the rest of us as the order of the day, Ruling Elves excluded of course.
Chief Elf, I am going pre-Budget to give you a little advice. It is straight-up, look-you-in-the-eye advice - ignore it at your peril. It's not mine originally; it comes from Horace. Si vis me flere, dolendus est primum ipsi tibi- "if you want us (me) to cry, you must first feel grief yourself".
I suspect you wouldn't know how, having lived in Dreamland for so long, but how about these for a few starters? Reduce the size of the Government and impose the kind of rationalisation in your own back yard that you are talking about introducing throughout the wider public service.
Dispense with the obscene notion of "severance pay" for those already employed or securely pensioned. You cannot be so comfortably insulated as to be unaware of the public revulsion that such payments engender.
How about a month-long abstention from the use of State cars, other than in exceptional circumstances? This is already a feature in many European countries, where ministers might have fewer notions about their importance.
It would save money and, we are told, the world!
Far more importantly, it would expose these lofty creatures to the sort of transport and road conditions that the rest of us have to endure daily. How about restoring Freedom of Information for us and dispensing with spin?
How about debate, inside and outside the Oireachtas so that issues can be addressed in their totality, rather than having the citizens fobbed off with ex cathedrapronouncements which often defy both logic and sense?
In this context and in regard to the health service, I listened to the Minister and Prof Drumm doing a duet on their version of the health service. There was no debate of course, no counter-opinion proffered.
There were the same old promises: "We're doing this and that and when it's all complete then judge us."
It struck me not for the first time that those beleaguered inside a fortress speak and listen only to each other. I presume this is to ensure themselves of the righteousness of their cause and the progress of their campaign.
They do not listen to the besiegers howling outside. They know best. It is a destructive kind of arrogance, particularly when it affects the welfare of so many. It was quite revealing; both these worthy souls carry private health insurance.
Surely if the service was as good as claimed this would not be necessary? This was pointed out by the interviewer and the Minister responded by saying that when the reforms were complete and the health Utopia reached, people would indeed forsake their private cover in favour of the State system.
This from the same Minister who is well aware that her co-located projects and indeed the whole private hospital network is based on the premise that this will not happen.
Let's get real; bank lending to such crazy, ill thought-out ideas is partly responsible for our situation today.
It was depressing to listen to them. I will write more about it again.
• Maurice Neligan is a cardiac surgeon