Unemployment has sent good hardworking Irish people on the boat to seek their fortune in Britain for centuries now, and it’s no different for former minister for health Stephen Donnelly, who will be rolling up his sleeves with CF, a healthcare management consultant.
Quite how the UK, home of the world’s first modern universal free-at-the-point-of-use healthcare system, wound up requiring expertise from Ireland, home of it costing €60 to have a doctor tell you to keep an eye on it, is a contemplation for another day.
CF spared no fireworks in their announcement of the former Fianna Fáil brainiac who was punted unceremoniously to touch by the people of Wicklow last year.
Unappreciated by the hill tribes of Delgany and Roundwood, he “designed and led the most comprehensive programme of investment and reform in Ireland’s public health services in decades”, said the announcement.
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“Stephen brings something truly unique to our UK transformation work – direct experience designing and implementing the exact type of comprehensive national health system reform that the UK government is now prioritising,” said Hannah Farrar, chief executive of CF.
He’ll help the company be consulted in the UK, where the cracks in society are growing wider and ministers can offer only words like “we will harness AI” to fill them. He will also work on expanding the business across Europe and the Middle East, where reforms are also in the offing.
“Some years ago I left healthcare consulting in the UK to enter parliament in Ireland,” said Donnelly in his announcement on LinkedIn, somewhat minimising his 13 years in the Dáil including a spell as founder/ co-leader of the Social Democrats and five years as minister for health.
“While there is still much to be done, crucial improvements were achieved,” he said, slipping comfortably back into the metrical worldview of the business-wonk, listing his achievements as follows: “a 60 per cent reduction in long waiters; a 50 per cent reduction in outpatient and 30 per cent reduction in surgical waiting times; a shift of care from hospitals to the community; an end to falling productivity; vital new patient services including a transformation of women’s health services; a new eHealth plan; a step change in public health and preventative care; rebalancing the regional deployment of health assets.”
Sounds like a record of delivery that could be of interest to the Health Service Executive (HSE), which is already regularly spending more than €100 million a year on external consultants, many of whom have never even been minister for health.
Giant vs Lilliputians
The youth of Ireland can rest easy: they have an ally in Frank McDonald, former Irish Times environment editor and author of several books about Dublin’s transformation into a kip.
The renowned critic joined Labour, Green and Independent councillors in a judicial review of the Government’s planned changes to apartment standards, characterised by the group as a “developer-led race to the bottom”.
He filed an affidavit outlining his bona fides (various books, various honours), his shock at the manner of the plans being introduced (“I was aghast”) and his proposed remedy (quash the plans, do an environmental assessment).
McDonald, the inadequately housed will be happy to hear, recently “moved out to Blackrock” where he lives in a “spacious new apartment on the top floor of a three-storey block”. It boasts “views south towards Three Rock Mountain”, he told the High Court, calling up what a High Court judge might consider a familiar and aesthetically appealing vista.
“I could spend my time reading novels and drinking champagne on our planted terrace,” he went on, no doubt sparking serious interest from judges at this stage.
[ Is Ireland ready for drab Soviet-style apartment blocks?Opens in new window ]
But no – he has chosen to fight for the younger generation, whose “plight will be aggravated by the dystopian future set out for them by the new apartment design standards referred to above, which effectively guarantee that they will have no option but to pay dearly for Lilliputian living spaces in glorified 21st-century tenements”.
So, like Bruce Wayne before him, he has set the champagne aside and joined the fight. The Government, extremely annoyed by all this, says it plans to fight back “robustly”.
Let us arise!
The youth could use such a champion when it comes to “deemed disposal”, Brian Cowen’s tax on unrealised investment gains that is felt as a deep injustice by the type of person who has unrealised investment gains.
Gen Z worldwide is interested in stocks and shares, having come of financial age during a long period where the lines have been heading in the right direction and their capital, while at risk, goes up rather than down.
Irish dabblers might start out following US advice, before encountering decidedly un-free market taxes taking a bite out of their profits.
Last week, in the hotbed of radical political thought that is “r/irishpersonalfinance”, the savings-and-investments subforum of social media network Irish Reddit, a user popped up with a plan: a national walkout to end deemed disposal.
“This Monday, at 2pm, we walk out of our schools, colleges and places of work,” the user wrote, in a hint at his youth, “demanding change”.
“For too long, the ruling coalition has ruled by diktat, without the slightest thought toward the preferences of the electorate,” quoth the rabble-rouser with a touch of (James) Connolly to his rhetoric.
“A people shouldn’t acquiesce to their government, the government should follow the will of the people.”
Monday, October 13th, came and went, and despite the poster’s claim that he had the support of “the rest of my placement cohort at the Big Four consulting company I work at”, Bastilles went unstormed and the fetters on free enterprise remained in place.
One to keep an eye on though. If this keeps up, the Progressive Democrats might spontaneously reappear.
