Maeve O’Neill, who recently replaced Eamonn McCann for People Before Profit on Derry City and Strabane Council spoke at the March full Council meeting on the state of the NHS.
Cllr O’Neill, a physiotherapist in Altnagelvin Hospital, reminded council the NHS was already on its knees before the coronavirus pandemic began, through over a decade of austerity measures and privatisation. 17,000 NHS beds have been cut since 2010. There were 100,000 unfilled NHS posts pre Covid, and health and social care workers have taken a 20% cut in wages in real terms since 2010.
She highlighted the surge in the use of the private sector throughout the pandemic stood out as a key feature of government response.
“There has been so much public money at stake to get this response right but the Tory tactic has been to outsource whatever they can with a rationale that they needed to get the track and trace system, the testing system and PPE in place as quickly and efficiently as possible, which we have seen the disastrous outcomes of. This strategy has undermined our response to the virus, has cost lives and has made the burden that health care workers carry even heavier.”
The hugely successful roll out of the vaccinations has been a success of the NHS, and shows how when the NHS and other public services are entrusted to get a job done, with proper resources poured in, we are damn good at it.
“The NHS are going to come out of this pandemic more understaffed than ever. We must fight for a pay rise to recognise the essential work and sacrifices of front-line health and social care workers. We need fighting unions to continue to protect workers rights during this pandemic but also to lead the call for the type of recovery needed. We can’t continue to work in an underfunded health and social care system, we can’t keep giving big pay outs to private hospitals and private care providers so they can make a profit from our public money. We can’t have unequal access to healthcare so that the poorest suffer in terms of access but also in the greater health inequalities that poor and marginalised people face.”
“The government’s handling of this pandemic has been shambolic. We need an All-Ireland strategy towards zero covid and we need a properly resourced health and social care service for the long term, not just for the pandemic. We have seen the value of health and social care service and its workforce and we will no longer be undervalued. Our health is the true wealth we have as a society and it depends on our NHS.”
“Health workers are fighting for a pay increase and we’re fighting for the future of the health service.”
