Cork IRSP activist Lar O’Tuama says he was “furious and disappointed as three of the biggest Hospitals serving the South West of Ireland, in Cork and Limerick, earlier this month hit breaking point again” – as one broke the daily record for overcrowding (Limerick University Hospital, with 92 patients on trolleys) and with vital patient operations and surgeries being cancelled at Cork Mercy Hospital and CUH
With the Election Campaign now in full swing and the parties of the status quo and most of the state and mainstream media outlets in full propaganda mode – this is a reminder that a Fine Gael or Fianna Fáil led government is not fit for purpose – and furthermore that while in power both parties have been deliberately running down the public health system to the benefit of private health providers, and the investment funds behind them.
Neighbouring EU governments such as that of Emmanuel Macron’s in France are currently doing similar with the French public pension system – lowering the quality of the public pension, with the aim of driving workers into investing in private pension funds.
Policies such as these are emblematic of capitalism today – amounting to structural attacks on the economies of the working class and its hard fought for, and hard won social rights.
Fine Gael and Macron’s ‘La France En Marche’ are ideological bedfellows, wedded to discredited neoliberal economic doctrines. Neoliberalism has been proven to miserably fail the working class, while at the same time redirecting wealth towards those who French opposition leader Jean Luc Melenchon describes as ‘those who stuff themselves’.
Ireland needs to follow the French working class and build a resistance movement based on street activism and trade union led general strikes – as France has been experiencing over the last 14 months.
Defiance of capitalist oppression must be fostered at home, and be both national and International in nature – Join the IRSP to help build the resistance!
Vive la lutte!
An Lucht Oibrithe Abú – Beir Bua!
