People Before Profit Dundalk have been informed by a reliable source that Mary Harney will be visiting the Louth hospital next week. The covert but trustworthy source has provided a date and time for this event. People Before Profit will not announce the date and time until the morning of her visit in an effort to ensure the plans are not changed, believing that Harney's schedulers are likely to percieve that they are bluffing. A protest is being planned but no decisive protest strategy has been decided upon.
There is something macabre and cruel about this visit. Harney played a defining role in the removal of acute A&E services, effectively committing the people of Dundalk to worry, ordeal and we have no doubt some to death.
It would be very human to coach her visit using purely angry words and metaphors. It is worth asking what the visit is about. Is she coming to announce a new stage of her plans to privatise the health system? Is her purpose to survey the progress of her privatisation plans so far? Or has she come to offer a poisoned olive branch of peace? We as a community must look must closer at what our governments are doing both nationally and locally. When we are opposed we must protest in every peaceful way.
Motives aside for one moment, the outcomes of her plans so far must also be considered. Her presence should not be welcomed in Dundalk or Louth with good reason. She has no mandate to be minister and has overseen the collapse of our health system. Such words do not however desribe the reality of this; Sons and daughters with their dying parents in a rocky ambulance to Drogheda. How many will look into their mothers eyes for the last time in an ambulance that should have been going to the Louth where vital services could have saved them?
People before profit ask that people arms themselves with the facts. Those able to attend the protest are encouraged to do so. Keep an eye on the facebook page for further announcements.
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