The Care and Mobility show

this is aimed at the Irish Health Service, both the Health Service Executive and Minister James Reilly and Kathleen lynch who has special responsibility for disability services.

in 'Mature Times' yesterday i see Minister Lynch proudly standing beside a beautiful young lady in a wheelchair, claiming that disability doesn't have to impair quality of life.

OUr Minister is telling us this but who has she heard this from?

MOST in the disability field are telling the MInisters of the day that Quality of Life has gone down the tubes in Ireland for the disabled sector of society during our austerity years.
With blanket wiping out of mobility grants and motorized grants, plus major increases in cost for prescriptions and no provision of adaptive aids the health service is causing hell to all with disability.

Our system is not the same as other countries.
Private health care and insurance goes a long way in most countries, if people can afford this.

Here in ireland we pride ourselves in being able to provide for both those in the public health system and the private health system, but it seems glaringly obvious that both are faulty with the departing CEO of HIQUA stating that 'we do not even know how many people we are killing'

This is frightening.
it should be the destabilizing factor for the Irish population.
Surely if nothing else, knowing that a top inspectorate believes we have a dangerous health system, even capable of killing its patients without even knowing how many we do kill is enough to have many screaming to Dail Eireann gates with open mouths crying.  Save ourselves from being killed, those of our loved ones and more besides, from the vagaries of the health service provided in Ireland.

We have such criteria for health that is so low at its base that arguing for the scraps from the table seems the way forward, and reducing a client/patient to shreds in the process.
Reducing patients to near nervous breakdowns is counter to good health, and should be seen as such.
it also should be seen as a human rights issue.

we should not be forced to feel near crack-up, like torture, when we beg for services regarding help and appliances in issues of disability.  Disability is not bought over a counter from the sweet jars, its sort of crashes to a person, usually giving an awful fright, but when the services to help do even more and give more fright then we are in deep trouble.

we should not be subjected to vitriol for attempting to plea for aid, as in powered wheelchairs, medication, physiotherapy, support and services.

ALL the requirements that patients with disability need are basic for living.
a means to get around - wheelchairs/ adapted vans, motorised grants, etc.
a means to keep the body healthy and well - proper physiotherapy.
means to feel less pain - appliances, splints, special shoes, eating aids and wheelchairs.

we are NOT talking about open heart surgery, the fine hands of the top surgeons.
we are not talking about transplants or brain surgery.

we are talking about hardwear and some physio.
it isn't a lot.
surely to God it isn't?

The Irish health service is non existent.
This is fact.
Known to be fact.
Feels fact.
Is fact.

waiting three years for a proper wheelchair and all along the way mountains of paperwork, even more requests for documentation and more anger, bitterness and bitching takes its toll on the body, the mind and the psyche.

waiting all the while for services that never come.

It's 'on the edge stuff'.

When i see that the difficulty of the European bank crisis has been paid for through the irish tax payer to the tune of 42% then we have to look at our Health Service as being a European one.
the EU effectively took it away and demand more cuts.
This, Minister Reilly says we cannot do and so the Haddington Road agreement will not be able to be adhered to.
We will again have an overrun of our budget, we already do.

Who can stop this farce that is a european construct and an irish population base of only 4million trying to bail out the whole of the european banks and losing not only our soverignty but also our health?

We can stop this tomorrow, i believe.
We can fight back.
We can demand that change should be made.

We have to stop this fiscal drain from our country leaving resources so depleted we cannot sustain the good health of the nation.

we have to stop Europe being so demanding that they are crucifying us.
in turn our own workers on the ground, in the health service and Minister Reilly's office and Kathleen Lynches office, literally 'lynching' us, the sickies and the disabled.

i am angry at the lack of response, the lack of urgency around issues of health in ireland.
i am also angry at many on say the social media ''facebook" creating such anger if health is even mentioned as to slit throats of those who speak of it, or complain about how bad it is, and it is!

The self righteous attitude of Minister Lynch telling us that disability should not impair our quality of life when she has made our lives a virtually  misery!
The self righteousness of those on social media, those of family and those well healed telling all who speak of their health issues to 'get a life,' there are far more worse off.

Well when you and they all say 'get a life.'
All with disability are asking for this, 'to have a life' and many did until austerity and we were crucified during this period and its not letting up.

In times past people did care.
I for one do not feel this now nor does my 87yr old neighbour.

No one does care.
This is why the health service is being diluted and services for those with disability also.

You wont be doing anything but complaining and moaning and crying and screaming if you end disabled in this country of ours.
it is not something that you lie down under believe me, when you feel it, you scream.

I scream.

 When i see or talk to those at the Care and Mobility show next weekend i will speak plain speak and say how MInister Lynch, MInister James Reilly have both turned away from two sick, very sick individuals and hardly had time to write or help in any shape or form whatsoever.
I will say this.
I will speak of the state of my present powered wheelchair.  This was given almost two years ago,  it was then ten years old. It lost a wheel this time last year and died last week, only to have an OT ring and ask if she would send a person to repair it - again, when the technicians report was damning saying it wasn't worth doing that, yet the OT saying thats what she wants done!  It was already terminally ill when given to me in the first place!

Irish health, service certainly is never with a smile.