The dictatorship of privatisation

The dictatorship of privatisation

Liamy MacNally

There are new regulations being proposed to deal with refuse collection in the New Year. One particular regulation, if enacted, will demonstrate how deeply the sea of dictatorship has eroded the shores of democracy in this country. It will place an obligation on everyone to present documentary proof of where they dispose of their refuse. What kind of country are we creating? More accurately, what kind of country are we allowing other people to create for us?
Those of us who use the Civic Amenity Centre in Derrinumera will, apparently, be informed, sooner rather than later, that it will no longer be ‘accessible’ to the public. We will all have to subscribe to a private refuse collection operator. Those who are proposing this in Mayo County Council should hang their heads in shame.

COPPING OUT        
For years, Mayo County Council has never met national or EU targets on waste policy. The Council never introduced the much-hyped ‘pay by weight’ system. Instead of leading by example, the Council gave a thousand excuses for doing nothing. All it had to do was give the public one reason for tackling the waste issues head-on. It was pushing an open door because people were so environmentally-conscious. People were waiting for leadership, intent on becoming part of a movement that would make a difference in the world we live in. Instead, we witnessed a hand-washing exercise of Biblical proportions as the refuse collection service was let slip and slide its way into the mists of oblivion. Excuses and a lack of imagination became the order of the day.  Segregation of waste – imposed on private waste collectors – seemed to be too complicated for Council boffins to work out and thus, the service was neither offered nor provided. 

PRIVATISATION
Eventually, we all realised that the god of privatisation had enough followers to warrant a serious threat to the refuse collection service in Mayo County Council. Those within the Council, and there were some, who wanted to lead by example and blaze a trail in the environmental stakes, were slowly and clinically despatched to the wings. They were isolated as the claws of privatisation spread. Many would like to think that Maggie Thatcher is gone and long forgotten. Not so; her legacy is the viper of privatisation of public services. It is alive and well, living and supping at the table of the so-called Celtic Tiger. The great ideals of the public servant are slowly and surely being ripped open by the corporate claw. Refuse, housing, water, roads, sewerage, in fact, any and every form of infrastructure is fair game for a price tag. All is reduced to pounds, shillings and pence, or to be more precise, to euro and cent. Anything that can ‘add the half pence to the pence’ is on the agenda.

ADMINISTRATORS
Services that were once provided proudly by a committed workforce will be reduced to administrative practices. While the corporate sectors count their pieces of silver the administrators will lose themselves in regulations and legislation, frantically searching for something that will give them meaning, because their raison d’être has been withdrawn. Their jobs, their very existence, will be defined by pen pushing rather than providing a meaningful service to real people. They will be forced to slither and slide down the greasy pole of privatisation and shake hands with the ‘loony left’ mindset so prevalent amongst administrators, the leftover crumbs of a Thatcherite mentality. While the corporate fat cats feed well, their administrative public servants are lost in the bureaucracy of meaninglessness. 
That is where we are heading with our privatisation of the refuse collection service and our rush to install water meters. Already there are companies, some local, some national, some multi-national, waiting in the wings for the flag of privatisation to be raised over us. At the same time they want us to believe that it is a flag of freedom. They forget that freedom is knowing the difference between right and wrong and choosing to do right. 

ELDERLY
Who will tell the elderly people and those unable to pay refuse charges that the Council waiver scheme is now being discontinued? What honour is there for Mayo County Council or any council to inform its citizens that they must now apply to the Community Welfare Officer to avail of any waiver scheme? It is humiliating and undignified. Any service that demeans and belittles people says more about the perpetrators and supporters of the scheme than anyone else.
It is reminiscent of Mary Harney’s latest scheme to deal with the elderly in nursing homes. She has given a new meaning to the term ‘developer’ with her penchant for taking a percentage of elderly peoples houses. She seems to forget they paid tax all their lives. 
In her Irish Times column last week Mary Raftery wrote: “In the late 1960s, for instance, roughly five per cent of those over 65 were in long-stay care. Today, it is 4.6 per cent. There has, however, been one significant shift. In the 1960s, four out of every five beds for long-stay elderly care were in the public sector.  Now, over half of the beds are provided by private interests, whose primary motivation is profit.  Remarkable, is it not, that during a period four decades ago when the country was so impoverished, we managed through State care to look after most of those elderly people in need, without them giving up part of their houses?”
This latest Government scheme for looking after the long-term elderly makes Mary Harney nothing more than an undertaker who gives out business cards that declare ‘Call me when you die’. Everything is given a monetary price rather than a value of service.
It is starting with the privatisation of refuse. Where are the grassroots Fianna Fáil members? It is even time to call the parties’ bluff on Ard Fheiseanna. They have been reduced to jazz and glitter instead of conscientious debate. John Healy, where are you?