Sir, – On Christmas Eve your Front page highlighted the Government plans to close community hospitals that house the most vulnerable, and supposedly, the most valued members of our society.
These hospitals are often located in remote communities and are literally “home” to the patients in their care. The patients’ familiarity with their carers and proximity to their local community and their relatives underpin their sense of belonging, self-worth, and of being wanted. To remove them from their communities removes their basic right to dignity and self-respect. The upset of the threat and reality of dislocation affects their quality of life, and indeed, their will to live.
These “unviable hospital units” are home to the residents in their care and in themselves are “centres of excellence”. The forcible relocation of any of our citizens is to be condemned, especially on the basis of an economic argument.
As a society we need to face ourselves and decide if we are comfortable with the targeting of the most vulnerable in our community as a form of economic cleansing and fiscal rectitude. Is this what we as a society want for our old people? We are against euthanasia but in favour of a death before death; death to community; death by exile; death by regulation, and death by economic argument.
Eleven of our TDs have unfurled the banners of protest and called us to the barricades against a €100 charge on all our houses – the price of a few turkeys. The whingeing media obsess about septic tanks and antiseptic celebrities.
Politicians leave in place child allowances for those who least need it. At every turn they wring their hands and point to Berlin.
Meanwhile, small and helpless groups of old people with little or no voice wait to see how the dice fall when the Minister for Health rolls them. Approaching the 90th anniversary the foundation of the State, we are choosing between Berlin and bust, we should be prepared to dig deeper, do better, and avoid both. – Yours, etc,