Privatisation

national | miscellaneous | opinion/analysis

Thursday July 13, 2006 14:16

by Jim O'Sullivan - Community Alliance-Sligo

The government policy of privatisation is being undertaken by stealth, Community Alliance are taking any opportunity available to alert the public and promote discussion on the issue to be open it for discussion

Community Alliance-Sligo
Rathedmond
Sligo
071 9171130
0879057872

Privatisation

One of the great enigmas of the twentieth century was how a sophisticated European community steeped in culture and all that is best about humanity, slipped under the influence of an extreme right wing ideology that was at utter odds with all that had gone before. The most exhaustive studies have pointed alarmingly to the power of propaganda as a key component in the deception. The most enlightened can be manipulated and duped if the circumstances are right. And by far the most important requirement is a lack of open honest debate which is replaced by sound bite and jargon and downright lies when appropriate. Which brings us to our current predicament. Ireland is being privatised. Citizens are being systematically dispossessed by stealth but nonetheless with the same ruthlessness employed by the mandarins that implemented the Plantations. Look at the evidence.
Our Health Service is being starved. While necessary planned investment to improve the infrastructure of the National Service is being put on hold, the plan to build private hospitals using our land and our taxes is being fast tracked. The NTPF is again using tax payers money to grow the private sector and an entity, the HSE, has been put in place and this can be sold off at some future date thereby completing the job of delivering health into a totally privatised state. Remember Telecom, C.I.E., Aer Lingus and the E.S.B. to mention a few. All either fully sold off or about to be.
Local services are nearly fully privatised. Services such as waste collection and general infrastructure maintenance are no longer delivered by the local authority. And now water is being prepared to be handed over. A private water multinational already has it’s foot in the door having entered a ten year contract with Sligo County Council and this same company has similar contracts with other Councils around the country.
In the area of housing, every day that passes sees more and more citizens denied the opportunity to own a home. An entire generation now are condemned to pay rent in perpetuity to the gilded. And those estates that are being built will not be taken in charge by the local authority but will be handed over to a private company and this will mean that those lucky enough to be able to buy a home will, along with their mortgage repayments, be faced with an additional never ending weekly charge (the return of rates and worse as the money collected will go to a private entity and not the local Council)
And despite the disastor that is the toll booth on the M50. The government has again handed over other roads to private companies for tolling. Even the highways are being handed over to the chosen few.
Which brings us back to the original observation. How can a people that fought for so long to achieve freedom and self determination be slipping into a tyranny in which a small unelected, unaccountable circle will own and control everything?

Jim O’Sullivan
Community Alliance-Sligo