If there was ever a good reason for Northern Ireland to stay part of the United Kingdom and not be part of the Republic, it is to keep the NHS. The Republic’s health system is a deeply divided two-tier system of private/public patients in what is fast becoming a far right-wing US system. Public patients are waiting years while insured people are being prioritised. The Republic’s system, quite like the US system, is an extremely cruel system for those who cannot afford the thousands every year to pay for expensive policies in a very over-priced health and pharmaceutical drug system. Patients are not treated equally in the health system like the NHS. Doctors in the Irish system toggle between their private hospitals and public hospitals where they also work with huge conflicts of interest and time management problems. It is a people-before-profit before people system – which the NHS is not. Bit by bit more and more public services are becoming harder and harder to access in good time with waiting lists which stretch from here to the moon and back. Patients from the Republic have to avail of the cross-border directive to save their sight while the Republic will let them go blind for a procedure which takes very little time.
The NHS is the guarantee that the British government ‘care’ about people and their medical needs and will not divide them into rich and poor, as the Republic system has been doing for some time now. Private consultants hospitals are even appearing on public hospital grounds as the right-wing chip away the public system.
Nurses and junior doctors are worked into the ground as patients suffer more and more in a system unfit for its purpose with a clear privatisation agenda where money is becoming king – not care.
If Northern Ireland ever decided to join the Republic, the people there would be in for one hell of shock when it came to their health care and would find it completely unacceptable.
Sinn Féin needs to think about the practical side of bringing about a united Ireland because it is there they might find the truth about why it has not or would not come about.
MAURICE FITZGERALD
Shanbally, Co Cork
Reluctance on part of taoiseach to ‘re-imagine’ Ireland
The leaders’ discussion at the Féile was an interesting experience, especially coming after attending the ‘Re-imagining Unionism’ discussion.
It would appear there is a great reluctance on the part of Leo Varadkar to re-imagine Ireland, at least in terms of laying down a foundation for a border poll.
One gets the impression he doesn’t want to talk about the prospect of a reunited Ireland. Unfortunately for him the conversation started in earnest with the result of the Brexit referendum in the UK. Even within the ‘Re-imagining Unionism’ discussion there was guarded talk of reunification and what it could mean for unionists trying to retain a sense of their Britishness.
It would seem that Leo sees the preparation for a border poll as a sort of Pandora’s Box that could unleash all sorts of hellish gifts. However, that box was opened a long time ago and we saw the result in the pogroms, the sectarian murders and the criminality that was unleashed on the people of Ireland. There is still one gift remaining in the box – hope. Perhaps there is an opportunity with Brexit for Ireland to move forward and become a modern pluralist country for all its citizens. That’s why the preparations need to be started, like Mike Nesbitt suggested at the ‘Re-imagining Unionism’ discussion, civic nationalism and civic unionism needs to start engaging and drafting proposals.
Equally important, Mr Varadkar needs to get his act together as well.
PATRICK J DORRIAN
Belfast BT15
Parish-pump politics
PATRICK Murphy – ‘Leo indirectly helped Boris over the line’ (July 27) – argues that Mr Vardakar assisted the election of Boris Johnson as British PM by his (Mr Vardakar’s) insistence of a “no hard border” in Ireland stance. A moot point, if ever there was, given the paltry understanding and sympathy that especially Tory Britain has about things Irish, except when Tories need loyalist votes to keep them in power.
Mr Murphy downplays the fact that it is the EU that is calling the backstop tunes. Its reasons for doing so are about their determination to secure its trade borders and to insist that the withdrawal agreement is the only instrument for negotiation in technical matters.
Then Mr Murphy (cheaply I thought), seriously downplays the vital importance of the Good Friday Agreement. There have been some parties that have played fast and loose with the outworking of the agreement, not least the shoddy me-first-to-the-lifeboat Tories getting into bed with loyalists to scramble for parliamentary survival. Neither Dublin nor London may change the substance of this agreement without incurring legal and local repercussions.
So, Mr Murphy we are not talking parish-pump politics as you imply. We have legal ‘boundaries’ (not just our border thing) and there is an expectation demand that they are recognised and worked from. Tory Britain wants to start talks all over again, with a pre-condition that there will be no backstop.
My view is that Mr Murphy has himself slipped into parish-pump politics by giving enormous weight to Mr Vardakar’s position.
MANUS McDAID
Derry City
Vote for your favourite lottery-funded project
Five projects from Northern Ireland have been named as finalists in the 25th Birthday National Lottery Awards 2019 and they now need your readers’ support to help us win.
The 25th Birthday National Lottery Awards are the annual search for the UK’s favourite National Lottery-funded projects. They celebrate the inspirational people and projects who do extraordinary things with the help of National Lottery funding – on average National Lottery players raise around £30 million for good causes every week. This year is particularly special as it’s the National Lottery’s 25th Birthday.
Brooke Park in Derry, the Mourne Mountains Landscape Partnership Scheme, Ulster GAA’s Wheelchair Hurling, the Imaginarium Arts and Story Centre in Newry and Kinship Care NI, a charity which supports children and carers, are competing against projects from around the UK to win a coveted award.
They could be in with the chance of winning £10,000 in November.
Readers can vote on www.lotterygoodcauses.org.uk/awards. Voting closes at midnight on August 21.
JONATHAN TUCHNER
National Lottery Awards, London
