Heart Beat:I am writing this before polling day and, when published, all will be revealed. Whatever the outcome no immediate change will be discernible to the ordinary citizen.
The sun won't rise any earlier, the birdsong will be as before and it will still rain despite all the promises to the contrary. We may wonder what all the frenetic verbiage has achieved and we will be free to ignore promise and counter promise. Gilbert and Sullivan's "This particularly rapid, unintelligible patter isn't generally heard, and if it is, it doesn't matter" is rather apt.
We will no longer be bothered with polls, ratings, surges, slumps and all the other arcane paraphernalia of elections. We can retreat into our usual torpor and pretend it doesn't matter. The sad thing is that it does.
From my own viewpoint and that of the vast majority of the medical and nursing professions, it is to be hoped that an incoming minister will listen, engage and then construct. It would be a nice change.
We could bear in mind the old Muslim proverb, "Trust in Allah, but tie your camel". In this post-election limbo there will be temporary peace and we need not immediately fear as Aristophanes wrote in 490 BC "under every stone lurks a politician". Times don't change all that much. All that being said, I love elections. I love the suspension of common sense and the collective suppression of memory.
I ignore the sheer implausibility of the offerings being laid before us and I marvel at the effrontery of those who would have us unquestioningly believe their particular credo. It all leads to a vibrant, interesting few weeks, colourful and crazy at the same time.
Mostly I enjoy the drama of the counts and our mystical system of proportional representation whose deepest workings are revealed only to a few special druids. Bit like reading entrails I suppose.
How anybody could think that electronic voting would play in this time-honoured ritual is beyond me. We are addicted to long counts, tallymen, transfers and eliminations and all the trappings of our indecipherable system.
A story comes to mind concerning a very distinguished colleague who had clashed with a political figure over the usual non-provision of service. On a sunny June day he was giving a party for the medical and nursing staff of his team. A radio in the background was giving election results as they began to trickle in from all over the country. My friend heard a brief allusion to the possibility that his political antagonist might be as is delicately expressed "in some trouble".
He regaled his staff with the history of the disagreement and later when it was confirmed that the politician had in fact been unseated, he proposed a toast to the happy event. One young lady declined, tearfully. "He's my father," she said.
At the end of the day, the votes will be counted and the results known and I could just as easily have gone to bed and read it all the following day. But that's not the same as the cups of coffee, the drip feeding of figures and the guessing where surpluses and eliminations might transfer. Unashamedly, I enjoy it all.
I was astonished, deeply so; by the assertion by some that there were no problems with the health service. I was depressed by it also; on the grounds that if you do not recognise a problem, you are not going to fix it.
Similarly, I could not understand the assertions that to provide 2,000-plus beds you would have to build five new hospitals over five years, "something that had not been done in the history of the State". This shows how deep the ignorance of health matters really runs. Did it not occur to these worthy folk that the addition of 20 beds here, 70 there, etc to the existing institutions according to need; might provide the bulk of those required?
The infrastructure in most is in place and huge additional expenditure should not be necessary. Yes we do need new hospitals in various areas and let's get on with that, but the bulk of requirements can be provided on the framework as it exists.
There are other agendas at work here. I noted that the Mater Private Hospital, one of the best of the genre, has been sold for a sum reputed to be in the order of €380 million. There are no carers involved I believe but rather venture capitalists.
In fact it is not clear exactly who is involved. This to me is a shocking indictment of our system. Presumably the money has to be recouped and guess who's going to pay? Have no doubt about it; we're going to pay for co-location also by rising insurance premiums.
I have been a long time in medicine and, like nearly all my colleagues, I didn't join up for this. I would think we would all like to know who all the directors of these innumerable private hospitals are; and what it is exactly that they think they will bring to the advancement of patient welfare for all the citizens of this State? That is a reasonable request and there should be nothing to hide.
I enjoyed a busman's holiday watching the RTÉ programme Surgeons. Men and women practising at the highest level in often deplorable conditions and enduring the Pavlovian response to the word "consultant".
They have not let down the health service, but they know who has.
Maurice Neligan is a cardiac surgeon.