Joe Higgins TD

The following is an email sent to Joe Higgins via Facebook (check out his Facebook page here), in response to his article “Joe Higgins: “Fine Gael’s new Health Policy a Charter for Privatisation”, and the reply by Joe.

It is published here as it is a good follow on from Joe’s article. All questions, comments and thoughts are welcome, people are encouraged to join Joe’s Facebook page and join the discussions there.

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Re: Article in Daily Mail

From: Ollie Gilsenan

Hi Joe,

I wholeheartedly agree with your opinions on health care. I work for the Pension Section of the HSE and I hate to hear of all the problems it faces on a daily basis due to the ineptness of the current government. However, how would you fund the HSE? And how would you deal with the bureaucratic nature within the HSE?

I am a Grade III Officer and even though most of the employees I work with have a good work ethic and have a wealth of knowledge within their respective positions. Unfortunately, there are higher up positions which I have no idea what their role or position in the service is required for.

Many thanks for reading this email and any response you may have for me.

Best of luck in the European Elections!
Ollie

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Dear Ollie,

Many thanks for your mail concerning the Health Service and my article on the Fine Gael policy document. Resources are obviously crucial for the service but it is crucial also as to how those resources are utilised.

In my view the key to a new Health Service would be to bring the staff at all levels of the service to the very heart of running it by setting up genuinely democratic structures to provide for this. There is nobody knows more about what needs to be done to improve and upgrade services, wipe out waste and so on, than the worker at the coalface. Such a structure would wipe out the heavily bureaucratised HSE and replace it. Those who have experience of receiving the services of the Health Service should also be formally involved in the process of developing policy and the best practices.

There are of course wider issues raised by the funding question. How can sufficient resources be available if they are dependent on market capitalism which gambles on stock exchanges and financial markets as if playing in a casino? We believe the banks and major financial institutions should be nationalised immediately but again under democratic control. In this way investment is directed for socially useful ends, to create and protect jobs and social services.

Even with the present system there are enormous resources being created in society. The devastating cuts in workers’ living standards by government dictat amounting to, say five billion in 2009, has to be seen in the context of the massive profits made during the boom. However tax on those profits was slashed by Fianna Fail and the PDs. Also in 2007 the multinational companies operating here made €34 billion in profits, €17 billion of which was sent back to their headquarters. In 2008 the figures are fairly close to that also. In my view we will not have sufficient resources until those enterprises are ‘socialised’ i.e. democratically owned and controlled.

These are just a few issues raised in you letter. Thanks for your good wishes. Please follow our campaign through our website, www. joehiggins.eu

Best regards,
Joe Higgins

PS: May we publish your question on our website?

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Hello Joe,

Thank you for your detailed and quick reply. I would be honoured if you published my question on your website. I really hope that popular opinion changes among the people of Ireland and that the socialist movement finally overpowers the mundane conservative thinking of the everyday publican. It is time the realisation dawns on the nation of Ireland and every other nation that the current status quo has to change in order to create a more equal society.

Kind Regards,
Ollie Gilsenan

{Slightly edited for publication here}

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