The growing ‘Save our Hospital’ campaigns across the country demonstrate that local communities are not going to stand by and let frontline health services be slashed.
But what is the overall HSE and government strategy for health cuts?

Enonomic Policy
The first thing to understand is that the cuts are driven by government economic policy not by health policy.
That policy is to reduce public expenditure and cut labour costs; both to save the rich money.
This is driven by a neoliberal, ‘Thatcherite’ policy of redundancies and driving down wages to boost ‘National competitiveness’.
The public sector is being used as a lever in a race to the bottom in wages and conditions across the whole economy.

Health Cuts
With this in mind the 2010 budget announced €4 billion in cuts in public services which included €400 million of cuts in the Health Service.
While €106 million was earmarked for ‘HSE Economies’, areas such as HSE West alone have had their budgets cut by €142 million; well in excess of the 2010 budget.
Planned cuts in HSE West are typical:
Closure of a children's home and health centres; a 10% cut in home help hours; ‘reconfiguration’ of three wards to weekdays only, the ‘amalgamation’ of wards and hostels in mental health with a loss of beds, a ‘reduction’ of 255 temporary staff and 92 nurses, and the loss of consultant staff at Galway University Hospital; closure of 27 beds at Mayo General Hospital; Roscommon County Hospital for closure or downsizing.

Closures and Staff Reductions
In order to further reduce health expenditure the HSE has closed 1300 beds in Hospitals around the country this year.
The moratorium (ban) on recruitment means thousands of staff are not being replaced when they retire or resign.
Numbers of frontline staff being lost, like nurses or Care Workers, are 5 times greater than management losses, according to the Irish Nurses and Midwives Organisation (INMO).
The HSE strategy is to report ‘budget overruns’ on smaller budgets, issue a ‘report’ recommending more cuts and closures, and then the cycle continues.
Hospitals which accept service reductions or ‘downgrading’ are then set up to be recommended for closure as ‘too small’ to be viable.

Protests Matter
Threatened resignations by FF politicians and reversals of planned closures at Portiuncula in Ballinasloe and Roscommon General show that protests matter.
The HSE’s chaotic slashing of staff and beds can be resisted.
The alternative to the government’s Thatcherite policies is: to get rid of the profiteers in private hospitals and health insurance and end the current two-tier system.
Totally unnecessary private consultant fees cost more than €400 million a year!
We need a comprehensive, universal health system, free at the point of use and properly funded by progressive taxation.
The increase in the numbers of millionaires and billionaires in Ireland show there is money there to fund the health service.
A 10% emergency tax on the assets of the super-rich would bring in €25 billion.
A 2% yearly asset tax would bring in an additional €4.5 billion a year.

Step Up The Action
To win these alternatives the ‘Save Our Hospital’ campaigns must unite and make common cause with health sector trade unions.
Fianna Fail hope that these protests will just ‘blow off steam’ and that there will be no serious follow up.
Campaigns need to step up the action:
1. Hold a national demonstration on heath. Don’t just see campaigns as a local fight. We need to link up all the health campaigns. On September 29th, there is an all European Day of Action against the cuts. Why not make that the day for protests?
2. Escalate the protests. If any move is made against a hospital or service, the unions should call a local stoppage and urge everyone to come out. We also need a campaign of mass civil disobedience – it is the only way to make this hard-nosed, right-wing government back down.