Monday 2nd November, Ballybot House, 7pm
As the suspension of Maternity services at Daisy Hill Hospital looms, People Before Profit have organised a public meeting on the topic. Richard Boyd Barrett TD, the party's parliamentary leader will headline a panel discussing how people power through community & workplace organising is the only way to protect Daisy Hill. He will be joined on panel by Rebekah Corbett a former Unison organiser alongside PBP's Newry & Armagh representative Marc Mac Seáin.
Marc Mac Seáin, heading organising for the meeting comments:
"We've seen cut after cut for years at Daisy Hill. Consultants leaving, services removed, beds & wards cut. The only times this have been paused or reversed even temporarily have been in the face of large community mobilisations through the SOS Daisy Hill campaign. Yet the direction of travel has been for managed decline. We think the fightback for Daisy Hill needs to be escalated, just as it successfully happening against austerity across Europe and we'll discuss how that could be done.
"Our politicians most particularly those in Stormont have miserably failed to stem this tide. In fact they've given political cover to service collapse through support for centralisation through the Bengoa Report. When Sinn Féin's Michelle O'Neill was health minister in 2016 she passed that report alongside support from Unionist parties, SDLP and Alliance None of these parties have pulled their support for that decade old report which remains the standard for the Dept of Health.
"The British treasury gives poverty budgets and Stormont meekly administrates them. Our standard of healthcare in the North is much worse than in similar NHS services across the British state. Less than half of A&E patients here get seen within hours compared to 7 in 10 who are in England. Around 35% of cancer patients start treatment here in 62 days, whilst the target is 95%, much lower than England's 65%. Ambulance wait times are abysmal, with queues outside Craigavon regularly of 8-10 hours which will become much worse. We cannot allow things to get worse and must organise ourselves against it. Stormont won't.
"We saw with Garvaghy Road how a community coming together can stop the state. In the free state 300k+ unionised public sector workers have forced pay negotations through strike, similar to the 150k strong strike here in 2024 to bring Stormont back. Unions will ballot in November and strike action around service closures should absolutely be part of that. We should take inspiration from the French student movement which has won a reform package or the Spanish housing movement. If we don't get organised and escalate in communities & workplaces, Daisy Hill will be left as a husk".