OPINION: Giveaways, insults and incompetence — the budget and our family carers

The last three Taoisigh were also Ministers for Health. Messrs Harris, Martin and Varadkar held both jobs during their political jousting. It’s hard to believe that any one of them took the health portfolio seriously. The health service just rolls from crisis to crisis and minister to minister. Their collective failures as Ministers for Health were not an impediment to their climbing the political ladder to reach the top rung.
Scandals have abounded in the health service yet these men (and others) slid their way to the top, regardless. Among the scandals are the cervical-check debacle, the blood scandal, the autism-dossiers scandal, the children’s-spinal-surgery fiasco and the retention and selling of children’s organs without consent. Many people have lost their lives because of ineffective and inept health governance.
There are still two ongoing scandals – the Children’s Hospital, where you can charge €25 million for a €250,000 job, and the daily dose of Trolley Watch. The Children’s Hospital was on Simon Harris’s watch when he announced the €1 billion project in 2017. That figure became €2.24 billion by February 2024.
After waiting and listening to health-service inadequacies we’re still stuck at square one. People are being treated in corridors on hospital trolleys, not because the staff are incapable but because the system is not fit for purpose.
Not one politician who has been at the helm of the health portfolio in recent years can be classed as competent. That’s some indictment of our politicians and especially of those now at the top. They know that the health service is unfit for purpose, yet they won’t tackle it.
Considering the exorbitant salaries enjoyed by the Minister for Health, his Secretary General and the head of the HSE, the taxpayer should be assured that solutions are on the way, not more of the same.
The insult is made worse by the recent giveaway budget, where politicians returned to taxpayers some of their own money and tried to take credit for being generous. This is an attempt to hoodwink us into thinking that life is good under the current government so we should return them to power. They won’t remind us that before the last election Micheál Martin swore black and blue that there was not a hope in hell that he would enter coalition with Fine Gael. All too soon he was tangled up in blue.
The budget was not a bundle of joy for some people, especially family carers, as was highlighted in these pages last week by Catherine Cox of Family Carers Ireland (see ‘Budget a mixed bag for family carers’, available on mayonews.ie). Many family carers have had a continual fight for basic rights for their children with special needs regarding health, medication, residential care, education and transport. School placements are a real test.
Medical and dental care are necessities for children, but its provision is anything but easy when parents are means tested. Some medications are not paid for, which adds to an already over-burdened family.
Most carers work far in excess of 40 hours per week. They have no statutory entitlements to sick leave, time off, holidays and do not come under the Working Time Act. They cannot be absent, yet some carers earn in a week what some people earn in a day. It gets more difficult if the carer’s partner is working. Pass a certain income threshold and the carer gets nothing.
Many carers face crippling financial reviews, being forced to divulge minute details of income and expenditure. The whole process is confusing and humiliating.
In an article published in The Journal on October 4 (‘Why are they means testing us? It’s inexcusable’), one such carer, Ann Brehony, pointed out that ‘carers have all the responsibility of not surpassing the [income] threshold, but none of the rights of access to the knowledge of how to make the calculation’.
Ms Brehony was informed last June that she was ‘not poor enough to be paid the full allowance’. The news came as her son’s health deteriorated. “I was spending long nights sleeping on the floor of the hospital by his bedside,” she said. “My workload doubled while my allowance was cut by roughly one third per week.”
The threshold increased in the budget so she’s ‘poor enough’ again to have a full payment. However, she must wait until July 2025.
A means test is often more a mean test. But when you’re a Taoiseach….