Cutbacks Archives - Socialist Fermanagh-South Tyrone

Stormont must deliver domestic violence refuges and emergency accommodation

March 31, 2022March 31, 2022 Admin

Cross-Community Labour Councillor Donal O’Cofaigh today pledged that as a MLA for Fermanagh-South Tyrone in May he would demand Stormont provide proper resourcing of refuges for victims and survivors of domestic violence.

He explained his experience on this issue to date:

“As a councillor I was able to attend a presentation by Women’s Aid on the current problems they were facing. I was both shocked and dismayed to find out that due to Stormont cuts, there were no longer any dedicated domestic violence refuge units anywhere in Fermanagh.
“Subsequently I raised this issue publicly and repeatedly at council meetings and succeeded in getting the council to write to the Communities Minister demanding action. In response, a commitment was made to provide three domestic violence accommodation units in Enniskillen – which was a success.

“That said, even this provision is completely inadequate. It’s widely known that the number of reported incidents of domestic violence has skyrocketed since the start of the pandemic but there is literally nowhere for those living in fear to go. This can be a life or death situation. Three or four emergency units are just not enough.”

Rural health services under attack

February 5, 2022December 30, 2022 Admin

The Bengoa reform is only the latest attempts to dismantle, rationalise and therefore privatise the NHS in Northern Ireland. The report – which has the agreement of all parties in the Executive – provides a blueprint for services to be withdrawn from rural areas and opens the path for ever greater encroachment by private operators in every aspect of health and social care.

The outworkings of this are to be seen in the growing role of the private agencies who are being paid hundreds of millions every year to deliver staffing – money that could easily fund a fair pay deal for NHS workers sufficient to bring back workers and end the staffing crisis.

But the staffing crisis that results undermines the delivery of services – most especially in rural areas where staffing retention and recruitment are most challenging – and this provides the grounds for Stormont decisions to cut services claiming that staffing levels are unsafe. Of course, those dependent on these fast-disappearing services find themselves forced to pay for alternative treatments – normalising the concept of paid medicine and undermining the ethos of the ‘free at the point of delivery’ NHS.

In recent weeks announcements threatening the acute status at South West Acute Hospital in Enniskillen and Daisy Hill hospital in Newry have been made by the respective trusts. Continue reading “Rural health services under attack”

Bus and rail services once again under attack from Stormont austerity

January 26, 2022February 21, 2022 Admin

Chris Conway, the Chief Executive of Translink, Northern Ireland’s bus and rail provider, today testified on the state of public transport here. His evidence confirmed the criminal neglect of public transport by Stormont over many years.

Mr Conway exposed the fact that per capita funding for bus and rail services in NI is only 27% of the UK average. That is Stormont spends just a little bit more than a quarter of what Westminster, Holyrood and Cardiff spend on bus and rail services – for every man, woman and child.

Uncertain future

This situation is compounded by the fact that Northern Ireland is a rural region and the cost of operating public transport here is far higher due to our sparse population densities.

Mr Conway warned that the very future of Translink itself was uncertain and said that underfunding of public transport left it facing question marks over its financial viability.

1,000 bus and rail services under threat!

In a comment which highlights just how bad things are. The Translink Chief Executive warned that one thousand bus and rail services would be lost if the budget remained 10 percent below where it was. He further said that these would be primarily in rural areas.

This would mean Stormont presiding over the greatest calamity in public transport here since the railways were closed and the tracks lifted up in the late 1950s.

Continue reading “Bus and rail services once again under attack from Stormont austerity”

Latest housing stats expose Stormont parties are in the hip pocket of property developers

December 31, 2021January 8, 2022 Admin

The latest statistics by the Northern Ireland Housing Executive confirm the long-term decline in public housing at the behest of policies enacted by consecutive Stormont Executives. The parties have consistently failed to properly invest in public housing despite a huge sell off of stock over recent decades.

Unfortunately, the latest statistics are released on a council based basis and not all councils have the 2021 figures published yet. That said, it is clear that public housing policy is totally inadequate in the face of massively mounting demand.

Continue reading “Latest housing stats expose Stormont parties are in the hip pocket of property developers”

Enniskillen needs a Post Office!

September 10, 2021February 21, 2022 Admin

Enniskillen plays a vital role in the economy of our county but over years it has been neglected by politicians of all stripes. The shutdown during the Covid pandemic brought things to a head and left in its wake empty buildings across the town. We face the prospect of a multi-million pound public thoroughfare upgrade being delivered at the very time when the future of our town as a commercial centre hangs in the balance.

Supports for workers who lost their jobs from both Westminster and Stormont government were inadequate leaving many prey to unscrupulous bosses who have sought to capitalise on the opportunities posed. Zero hours workers in our town were made redundant overnight – those with less than a year on the job found themselves jobless with no redundancy payments. Many have turned to the trade unions as the best guarantee of protecting themselves from fire and rehire, to win basic health and safety protections and even special Covid payments. This is to be welcomed but the reality is that Stormont continues to preside over an unfair playing field in which workers find the laws stacked against them.

In order to reverse the trend, Stormont must deliver public investment for Enniskillen from Stormont for quality job creation. Cross-community Labour councillor Donal O’Cofaigh has demanded the council take the lead in securing a planned approach to town regeneration, reversing the combined effects of market failure and the pandemic. Efforts by him alongside independent councillors to pass a ‘no cuts, zero rates increase’ budget failed last year but earlier proposals to reduce opening hours at leisure facilities were averted.

Decades of underfunding by Stormont and Westminster have led to a wastewater pollution crisis

January 28, 2021February 21, 2022 Admin

Northern Ireland is the only region in the UK where the water service has not yet been privatised. That fact largely reflects the strong campaign fought by the trade union movement, in many cases led by members of the Committee for a Workers’ International, that defeated cross-party attempts (including from Sinn Féin Ministers) to roll out water charges in the early 2000s.

Zones where houses can’t be built in NI due to inadequate wastewater infrastructure

Northern Ireland water was established as a government-owned company – owned by the Department for Infrastructure. Unfortunately, the Stormont Executive has repeatedly failed to prioritise investment on this infrastructure – despite growing warnings of both economic and environmental impacts arising.

The impact of untreated wastewater entering water bodies has been catastrophic for the fresh water ecology and fish stocks. Angling has been hugely impacted and water quality in virtually all major water bodies has deteriorated.

Such impacts have largely been ignored by the Stormont parties, as they are largely non-economic.

What is starting to focus minds; however, is the fact that the ability of property developers to build houses is now increasingly constrained by the inability of wastewater treatment works to cope. Northern Ireland Water estimates that 116 cities, towns and villages have had their development constrained.

Fight to keep TV license for over-75s

August 6, 2020February 21, 2022 Admin

Protest against TV license outside BBC in Belfast

One of the Tory government’s meanest measures was removing the free TV licence from the over-75s. This is an interview with John Martin from Enniskillen, Regional Secretary for Northern Ireland of the National Pensioners’ Convention.

Martin sees reversing the removal as very important. “It’s one of the most prioritised campaigns for the National Pensioners’ Convention,” he said.

Martin knows the importance of TV for many elderly people. “When I was a postman I used to see a lot of people out the countryside,” he said. “I can tell you about one man. I said to him: ‘Why do you have the TV on all day.’ ‘Because I can hear somebody talking.’ That sums up the loneliness a lot of old people feel.”

Martin sees the behaviour of the Tory government as ‘disgraceful.’ “They said in the last two manifestoes that the TV licence would not be touched,” he said. “It got up my nose the way the rich and the Establishment can pick on the poor people, the most vulnerable.”
Martin said he will be writing to the Convention’s General Secretary in London. “What steps are we going to take now?” he said. “Are we going to be more militant, more radical?”

He doesn’t yet know the tactics that will be used. One possibility is organising pensioners to pay their licence in instalments by cheque every month. “If all the pensioners pay by cheque, it will gum up the system,” he explained.

Another possibility is that pensioners will block roads. “Some us would take ten minutes to cross the road, let alone blockade it,” he explained.

Already, the Convention has organised protests at BBC buildings in Belfast and Radio Foyle, Derry. In Belfast they had about 50 protestors, blockaded the building, and got into the foyer for a while.

Whatever the tactics, the campaign will continue. “You have to keep battling on, it’s all we can do,” Martin said.

Five years ago, the Government shifted the cost of the free over-75s licence to the BBC. Until August 1st this year, it had been free.
The licence is now means-tested by the BBC. “The BBC does not have the expertise to do that,” Martin said. “As well, means testing is not fair. If a pensioner is a couple of shillings over, they have to pay the full licence.”

That meanness has infuriated a group the Tories saw as an easy mark.

Covid crisis of dentistry shows NHS model needed for dental health

July 20, 2020February 21, 2022 Admin

A crisis has been building in the dental sector in Northern Ireland over many years but the Covid pandemic finally pushed it over the edge. Last week, the British Dental Association appeared before Stormont’s Health Committee to plead for action in the face of a grave threat hanging over the provision of dental services. Absolutely nothing was done until today when a last minute, u-turn was forced from Minister Robin Swann under mounting pressure from political representatives like myself and adverse media coverage.

Today’s decision means that none of the five Covid Emergency Dental Treatment Centres will close as planned next Monday; instead they will remain open until the end of August. It averts the immediate threat that dental services will be denied patients but the potential and even likelihood of a grave crisis remains high.

Aerosol generating procedures

Opened at the start of the Covid lockdown, emergency dental treatment centres provided access to what are known as ‘aerosol generating procedures’ (AGPs), which include such minor procedures such as drilling for fillings or even teeth cleansing. AGPs result liquid spraying in the air and particularly increase the rise of viral transmission. As a result practitioners and staff have to wear respirator units and higher grade PPE than are standard.

Dental practices which have reopened in recent weeks have not been allowed to conduct AGPs but they were set to take on this workload when the emergency dental treatment centres closed.

Unfortunately they were nowhere near a position to do so; the Health Department indicated several weeks ago that it was unable to obtain the higher grade PPE required by dentists to safely conduct AGPs. Each practice was left to individually source its own supplies. To add even more to the chaos, dentists were not even able to secure face-fitting to practitioners and staff members – required for the safe operation of PPEs – because of the small numbers of fitting specialists in the region and the huge demand for their services right now.

The result of these factors was that it will be many weeks – potentially months before most dentists will be able to safely drill or provide fillings – and that was assuming they could obtain the needed PPE once they were fitted. The BDA estimates that more than 90 percent of dentists in Northern Ireland will not have properly face-fitted PPE in place for Monday’s reopening.