The
Slovenian philosopher Zizek describes with his usual candour, the
diligence that Norman Bates brings to the task of
mopping up the blood after he has committed his murder, the
perfection and finality that he brings to his work is symbolised through the conscientiousness of his hand washing.
There is indeed a certain beauty to be found in the grotesque, the
beauty for example of the 'perfect crime', where everything is
returned to a state of order and completion that is a perfect
reflection or even an improvement upon the previous state of affairs.
When one
considers corruption, political, social and institutional in an
Irish context it can be considered upon the level of a perfection, a
completeness and thoroughness that at times might even (from a
certain perspective) be considered as beautiful. A recent example of
this perfection is to be found in the thousand words that are spoken
by the picture of the leader of the Irish People and the Head of the
Apple Corporation exchanging a hand shake. Beneath the beaming
dignitaries the caption proudly declares:
31 JANUARY 2014.
"We'll shake on that then Tim. 2% Tax for Apple and 50% tax for the plebs,
its a deal! Will you throw in an ipod for meself, like a good man?"
"APPLE
chief executive, Tim Cook, staged a private meeting with Taoiseach
Enda
Kenny in Cork as the Irish city celebrated 1,000 new jobs in just
seven days." (Irish Independent 31/1/2014)
Like many
corporations Apple has it's European headquarters located in Dublin
because Ireland maintains the lowest corporate tax rate in the EU.
It is for the same reason that Yahoo recently announced (much to the
annoyance of the French) that it too would be moving its headquarters
from Paris to Dublin. Latvia has a corporate tax rate of 19% Romania
has a rate of 16%. These relatively poorer European nations must
compete with Ireland's rate of 10%, and Ireland's relatively advanced
and almost entirely EU funded infrastructure.
In Ireland
we pride ourselves upon our special relationship with America,
inwardly we imagine ourselves to be the Quiet People, the fifty-first
state of the Union. We remind ourselves of the real or imagined
ancestry of a majority of US presidents, of the special interest
America has always taken in the Northern Ireland peace process. Any
dislike we might feel towards America or Americans is merely the
manifest form of the transient jealousy a schoolboy might feel
towards his best friend, towards his idol, the boy who has
everything. In reality we love America we dream of America, and in
terms of our national identity we wish to become all that we
romantically perceive America to be.
Click here for a recent example of Ireland's inferiority complex, expressed with the usual bombast of the insecure.
When I was
a child, my grandmother's council flat in Fairview, in her hallway
next to the Pope was a picture of JFK. Today not far from her flat
Crowe Park stadium (rebuilt in the height of the boom), has a capacity
for 80,000 people. Garth Brooks, tired, overweight and artistically
well passed his sell by date, has sold out five consecutive concerts
at Ireland's biggest stadium. 400,000 thousand people, 10% of the
entire population will come to pay money and homage to a piece of the
American Dream of twenty years ago (that dream has evolved a little
Since Brooks was in the ascendancy). Christ would be lucky to draw as
big a crowd as a pot bellied Garth, singing to his friends in low
places that he has 'friends in low places.
It is an
interesting irony that the United Nations Earth Summit in Rio in 2012
was an international event devoted to Sustainable Development, and
ending world hunger, and so on and so forth; it drew an estimated
crowd of 40,000 people. perhaps one should not be surprised at Brooks popularity, we live after all in a world that still brings its Children to the Zoo and Sea World to watch abused and demoralised animals jump through hoops and pace about in concrete pens.
It is only
very rarely that we might be encouraged to think, to look beneath our 'special'
relationship with America and see that it is our corporate tax rate,
or the reality that CEO's are granted private
audience and influence with the Taoiseach, that attracts American firms. My sisters
live in San Francisco and they describe their frustration at the
soaring house prices in silicon valley, a soar that is driven by the
growth and incomes of Tech firms such as Apple, whose profits are
greatly influenced by their tax arrangements with the Irish
government. A recent study by Professor of Finance at Trinity College in Dublin revealed that whilst Ireland might publish a corporate tax rate of 10%, its effective rate for US multinationals such as Apple is no more than 2.2%. (
irishtimes.com) Ironic that we in Ireland bemoan the bubble that has
recently burst in our own housing market whilst at the same time we
actively inflate the bubble in Silicon Valley.
The Irish
vote in US elections is almost as important as the Jewish vote. It
is this fact and the reality that American Bombers may use Shannon as
an unofficial military base in the North Atlantic, that so endears
us so to our American heroes. A hearty helping of sugar coated doggy
biscuits: of John Wayne, Rambo, Clint Eastwood Elvis and Garth; Miley
and Carley for the teens, Disney for the kids and NASA for the
rationalists, have all effectively sealed the deal and won the hearts
and what remains of the minds of the plebs.
It is
interesting to consider what Chruchill might have made of Irish
Neutrality had German planes been granted the same use of Shannon
Airport that American bombers and personnel carries were granted
during the Gulf war. We might have no need of a Georgian preservation
society, had the same rules applied there would be little to
preserve. This is the perfect nature of corruption in Ireland, that
it can run so deep that so many people and politicians can convince
themselves of a superficial neutrality in the face of such a blatant
contradiction.
We
continue to shudder at the repugnant thought of Priests or figures of
authority interfering with children. Yet our inability or
unwillingness to see the reality of what is occurring, in preference
to the reality that we would rather believe is as as pathological as the abuse, perhaps more so. It is pure folly to
assert that of the many past and present victims of child abuse, there were no cries for help, no pleas for recognition of what
was occurring, of the horror that children were compelled to endure.
The
unspoken and unexamined truth of abuse is that many if not most in
Irish Society chose not to
see it, in the same way that the majority choose not to see the
reality of Shannon Airport, or that of Apple or the truth of the Zoo. Or the relation
between consumption and the sand bags that county councils are
distributing to families and local shop owners, so that the reality
of global warming might not come rushing into their homes and
businesses. There is perhaps no society, no culture on earth that is
more adept at protecting itself from the truth of the real, of the
moment. Joyce referred to this innate ability as our collective
'paralysis'.
"I call the series Dubliners to
betray the soul of that . . . paralysis which many consider a city."
Joyce believed passionately that Irish society and culture had been
frozen in place for centuries by two forces: the Roman Catholic
Church and England. The result, at the turn of the twentieth century,
was one of the poorest, least-developed countries in all of Western
Europe. Cliff Notes (Online 2014): Dubliners.
The poverty of Ireland today is one of intellect, of literature, culture and philosophy. Our paralysis our inability to actualise an identity, a culture of the modern, creates a vacuum, a space that is partly filled by Garth Brooks and Miley Cirus.
If
Joyce could have lived and encountered the blooming of that
paralysis into Ireland's national broadcasting agency, he would
undoubtedly concur that thinking in Ireland is as paralysed today as
it was one hundred years ago. However one need not refer to Dubliners for a
treatise on the psychological paralysis of the Irish people, one need
only listen to Ireland's most popular broadcasters, to Gay Byrne,
Marion Finucane, Tubridy or Pat Kenny, to encounter the living form
of that pathology the refusal, the innate inability to look beneath
the surface of things, to see new aspects of reality,
that in truth are not new at all and in fact have been lost to us
through our embrace of paralysis.
Irelands'
rebound love affair with her new colonial master, prevents her from
seeing the wood from the trees, from looking behind the mask of her
saviours, the house-wifes choice. To recognise capitalism or the market, as the
motive behind the rising waters, behind the unhappiness of relative
wealth, the filling of prisons, the illiteracy and
ennui of youth; would be to handle the bite that feeds us.
The
straight jacket that we are compelled to wear is typified by the
empty irony that Sin Fein have evolved into. In the past Ireland's
enemy was the English. The destruction of the language, culture, the
economy, our national identity etc, were all the fault of our oppressive
colonial masters. Out of this 'truth' Sin Fein, 'we ourselves' were
born. Out of this 'truth' revolution and civil war were born. Sin
Fein are the bearers of our historical chalice of woes;
of the famine, Travelian's corn, the six counties, Hill Sixteen and so on. The
Citizen in Joyce's Ulysses, gives a near perfect rendition of the
familiar tale of Ireland as the passive victim of her colonial
master. Sin fein are compelled to remain frozen within this historical paradigm, whist the new master; the markets, capitalism and materialism are eating the very heart of the Irish nation.
Sin
Fein remain cast in this traditional mould of England as the enemy,
for several reasons all of which border upon a tragedy of
Shakespearean proportion. It was to America that De Valera appealed
for money for the cause of hackneyed liberty, it has been America that has filled the
coffers of Sin Fein since the party's inception, It was American
dollars that financed the war of independence, and the IRA. Garth Brooks'
musical career might have peaked in the US and be approaching its
nadir, whilst in Ireland he approaches his zenith; so too are the
anti-British ideals of Sin Fein almost spent in Ireland, yet they
are alive and well in America, from where the party continues to
derive a substantial amount of its revenues.
The modern Irish tragedy is that, Sin Fein, (the keepers of Ireland's tradition of Independence), have become the lap-dog of the most significant ongoing threat to that independence. They are in effect, entirely wedded to Ireland's new colonial master, and hence to the
ideals that have usurped what remains of an Irish cultural
identity, at the very least inhibiting its growth in a new and evolved form. Today it is not the Church and the English that paralyse Ireland's intellectual development it is our collective inability and unwillingness to see beyond current redundant paradigms.
The process of globalisation might simply be described as
the global aspiration and application of the American Dream, of
capitalism and the markets and those ideals that are the bedrock of
the American definition of freedom, or democratic capitalism. Whilst Sin Fein was once a party that was devoted to the cultivation and
preservation of Irish independence, it has somewhat inevitably
evolved into a paralysed and toothless guard-dog one who barks at
everyone except the thief that is his master.
In
a letter to History Ireland Desmond Fennell posed the following
question:
Sir,—It
is normal for national historians, in the narration of the history of
their nation, to mention or recount, in due place, the intrusion,
progress and influence of a foreign ideology or world-view. Irish
national historians have done this, successively, in the cases of the
arrival and impact of Christianity, the Anglo-Norman invasion,
Continental Catholicism, Protestantism, the English legal system,
French republicanism, British classical liberalism, Victorianism,
Catholic Ultramontanism and socialism. Hence my puzzlement at the
absence of any treatment, in the Irish historians’ accounts I have
seen, of the principal foreign ideological penetration of Ireland in
the past half-century. I mean that of American left liberalism,
which, with its new set of dos, don’ts and do-as-you-likes for
behaviour, thought and language, has become—with the support of
Irish legislation—the Republic’s reigning ideology. The fact that
since the 1960s/70s this American ideological colonisation has
produced the reigning ideology of western Europe generally takes
nothing from the fact that its arrival via London, and takeover in
Ireland, have been a substantial part of our recent national history.
Omitting an account of this from our historical narrative has been
equivalent to Romanian or Hungarian historians failing (unimaginably)
to recount the arrival and implementation of Russian Communist
ideology in those countries from the 1940s to the late 1980s. Can
anyone, beginning with our historians, explain this remarkable
omission from the Irish historical narrative?—Yours etc.,
Desmond
Fennell
History
Ireland April 2013
The
answer to Fennell's astute observation is that Ireland cannot afford
to recognise its most recent invader. It cannot afford to recognise
it's invader, for the same reason that families could not or would not see the powerful abuser in their midst. Indeed today there is no desire to recognise the current transformation of Irish culture as invasion as it is an almost entirely willing transformation.
Ireland's historic relationship with England might brutally be described as a rape, with
all of the attendant feelings of injustice; of wrong and abuse translating ultimately into an indignation and a support from her sons and daughters in America.
However in this present cultural invasion or usurpation, that is this process
of globalisation, Ireland is a willing and compliant bed fellow. We
do not wish to consummate the union by an open declaration of
marriage, and therefore the transformation is not to be openly advertised in
the media or History Ireland. Part of Ireland's confused modern identity is a vigorous assertion of that new identity in the context of the Union,(we are proudly European) of Europe, of the other who is bigger than us or our former colonial master. In asserting we are European we preserve the we ourselves, the anti-english element of our historic identity Of course we still wear the green jersey, and sing the fields of Athenry, yet in reality we move further away from a national identity, towards the homogeneous conglomeration that is an American or European Union. This union brings with it, the social
and humanitarian consequence of the 'free' market, it brings with it
the ennui of 50 channels, the consequence of readily available
pornography, the diseases of sugar, fat, speed, and excess, and the
diminution of philosophy and literature in place of shopping
catalogues and shopping malls. Generations have come and gone since the Gaelic League, since the Cummans, the White Boys. The winning of independence was the greatest blow to Irish independence, it came a century too soon, for Ireland had not yet created an identity into which that independence might have grown. Had the English remained in authority in Ireland for a further hundred years, the language movement, the development of a viable cultural identity would have been more complete and vital enough to have grown into something substantial. As the Basques struggle for independence and preserve and promote their language as a crucial feature of their cultural identity, so too will they experience the decline and demise of that language should its preservation and promotion be not firmly established prior to the arrival of their independence.
Recently
I attended a talk by the Joyce Scholar Declan Keiberd in the Abbey
Theatre in Dublin. Kieberd began with a crowd pleasing
reference to the hardships 'we' are enduring as a consequence of the
recession and the tragedy of unemployment. At the end of the
presentation I asked Professor Kieberd whether the
real tragedy in Ireland is not one of unemployment but rather one of
mis-employment. I suggested that upon most coffee tables throughout
Dublin one would be far more likely to find a dog-eared copy of
the Argos Catalogue, than a copy of Joyce's Ulysses. That the real
poverty we face in post industrial revolution Western society is not of wealth but one of intellect and culture.
Kieberd
perhaps did not have time to consider my question, for he replied
that he had an Argos catalogue himself and he was sure that Joyce
would have one were he here today. I suspect that Kieberd was (to
quote from the American Historian Will Durant) as 'wrong s someone
can be within the limits of a single sentence'.
Joyce was indeed a materialist, however I suspect that his dream, (if he had a dream at all), was of a Dublin removed from the
squalor and poverty that is inflicted by the self and the state. The
state through an inequity
that is symbolised by the pomp and circumstance of trhe Viceroys regal cavalcade, and the self through alcohol dependence
through the self pity and an intellectual or moral paralysis that are typified by the Citizen,
and by the 'overarsing leafage and silver effulgence' of Dan Dawson's
speech.
"---Sinn Fein! says the citizen. Sinn fein amhain! The friends we love are by our side and the foes we hate before us." Ulysses: Cyclops
The
brute poverty of Joyce's Dublin has been effectively remedied, if it exists at all it is of an entirely different form to the barefoot poverty of a century ago. I have often witnessed a beggar
on the streets of Dublin, texting on his mobile phone whilst begging, an expensive and wasteful cigarette hanging from his lips.
Poverty, when it does come alive, is a consequence of addiction and
abuse rather than deprivation. If it is ever experienced by Kieberd's audience,
it is almost entirely of the relative kind. There are no barefoot
children on Moore street, and the squalor of the tenements has
disappeared, leaving behind an occasional wreck of filth that is the
consequence of an absentee landlord, of addiction, abuse, or mental illness.
Social
welfare payment for one, amounts to 180 Euro per week; a full chicken and a ten kilo bag of potatoes can be purchased from a Dublin supermarket for
less than 10 euros. Admission to a public library is as free as the sea air, or
a walk upon the strand. These are not crowd pleasing truths but they
are truths nonetheless. The industrial revolution has brought us a
freedom from actual poverty, yet it has plunged us into the
unhappiness and despair of a relative poverty who's consequences are
as severe upon the mind as those of real deprivation are
upon the swollen and distended bellies of malnutrition.
The
screams of women in childbirth with nothing more than prayers as
analgesia, have changed too. Today it is not poverty that creates deprivation but
rather wealth itself, for many women it is not the lack of analgesia
available in childbirth, but rather the choice and empty promises of
that analgesia that exacerbates their pain. It is not poverty
that creates pathology but excess; fat, sugar, legal and illegal
dependence, unhappiness, speed, and the relative nature of wealth, these are the
diseases of modernity.
As
a consequence of the intellectual paralysis of Irish society, the
absence of a forum of ideas, of an oasis (physical or
ethereal), where thinkers might come together and exchange ideas, might
drink from the real and unfettered thoughts of others, where intelligence and deeper thought might be celebrated rather than vilified; there is
little choice but to flee. Ironically it is to America that
Irish intellectuals like Kieberd have chosen to escape the global
consequence of the American Dream.
Sin
Fein are perhaps representative of the biggest tragedy upon the Irish
cultural landscape. And yet Sin Fein are reflective of their popular
base, of those who vote for them and sip from the elixir that is Banba's cup of woes. The paralysis of Sin Fein within its anti-english paradigm,
the absence of a political alternative to Globalisation or the
American dream, means that what remains of actual political independence is
to be observed in the persona of politicians like Ming, Mick Wallace, the United Left or
Senator Ross. However even these weak and ineffectual 'alternatives'
must struggle with the reality that cut off from language, culture and philosophy, they too have no alternative. That in
an Irish context, alternative visions outside of the market, and the universal plea for more money for this or that section of the populace; outside of the pointing to the failures of capitalism and the
infinite examples of institutional and individual
corruption,--- there is no alternative. Irish society is wedded to the markets, and entirely enamoured by its new colonial master. We
remain therefore, compelled to see and bemoan the consequence of the
American 'dream' yet we are incapable of formulating a new dream or vision for
the future. We remain incapable of imagining a future not because we
have an insufficient reverence for the past, but rather because we are frozen within or past and have
an insufficient reverence for the present, for the here and now.
Every
year, every day in Ireland the difficulty in reconciling the truth of
social reality with the pretence of old ideals and old morality becomes
increasingly difficult. When truth and fiction can no longer be
reconciled, insanity or flight become the inevitable choices. In
Catch 22 Joseph Heller refers to this process of reconciliation as
'protective rationalisation'. One can either be too stupid or too
smart to find oneself incapable of the process, to listen with
complacency to the narrow world according to RTE. I am
not sure to which school I belong, however to continue with the farce
has become too much to ask of a soul on life support.
One can either be a capitalist or one
can be a socialist, one either believes or one does not, one is
either pregnant or one is not, there are absolutes, there is a point where compromise is impossible. We have as a nation passed the point of compromise with the past, we must move into a new and rational future, Joyce recognised that we had passed that same point one hundred years ago.
To
practice medicine successfully in Ireland, one must be
either shrewd or stupid. One must cherish conscious or subconscious
beliefs in respect of ones entitlement, ones superiority; or one must recognise that morality within the system is to be got around and overcome, much like ones tax obligations. Ours is a system that is not for the benefit of public and private alike, it preserves its colonial ideals, tipping the cap to the moral authority whilst inwardly dreaming ways to out smart it. Only thing is that, without England we are reduced to cheating and out smarting ourselves alone. In Ireland the biggest crimes occur within institutions, by their own members and not from without. Today Ireland needs to be protected from none other than itself. Personal
gain or private benefit is the ultimate truth the guides one
between the obstacles the moral turpitudes the shady areas between
black and white. Ones morals need only be in keeping with those of a
Joe Duffy or a Pat Kenny, Ireland’s contemporary Archbishops of the mind, her
abiters elegantarium. The prerogative of the individual is
'more more more', that of the state is economic growth, (the same more more
more); the hymn sheet has become universal and one must merely pay
homage to our quasi neo-liberal moral code and its big mouthed purveyors.
Nowhere
are the contradictions more blatant and the distance between right
and wrong more pronounced than in the Irish institutions of Medicine and Law. The majority of participants in these modern tragic comedies appear secure in the belief that they are decent moral people, living in
abeyance to the quasi moral code; good citizens, good employees, good
physicians, good leaders. And yet nowhere is the truth of an inverse so blatant, nowhere
are corruption, nepotism, thievery and venality so rank.
Self
preservation is dependent upon shrewdness or delusion, there is no
middle ground. It begins at the beginning, at the place where 17yr
old boys and girls begin to learn to be doctors or lawyers. How can a
mere child make such a decision? How can a virgin to the sufferings
of man, to man’s inhumanity to man, sit at the bedside and listen
to talk of abortions, of abuse, of hurt, of neglect, of self destruction in its myriad of
contemporary forms? It begins with 50 thousand Euros in fees for the
pleasure of attending medical school at the Royal College of Surgeons, and with that
institution's perverse relations with the nations busiest and biggest public hospital. A thousand medical students most paying fifty thousand Euro per annum for three years of training at a
public hospital, where the tea the coffee the teaching and the toilet
paper are paid for by the same tax payers who are guinea pigs, the
practice and the cadavers. The corruption transcends the state subsidised private
tuition fees, and the registered charity status of the nations
wealthiest private college, and mingles with the blood that is taken
from public patients at public hospitals and passed on to private
biotech firms to engage in research to isolate the genes for new
patented treatments for cardiovascular disease.
From
medical school to the colleges, to the schools of post graduate
training, the institutions regulatory bodies and doctors unions. The
the chief of the Irish Medical Organisation recently retiring on a pension
package of 20 million Euro, to the role of the sitting Minister, former
head of the same union, in the approval of that package. A union with
no more than four thousand members and a retirement package 20
million, forgotten almost as quickly as the story broke.
And what of
the sale of medical card patients (herds of milking cows) by the Irish College of General
Practice? Not a peep. The safest form of corruption in Ireland is institutional corruption. A GP on the Nedical Council's 'Specialist Register' can
obtain a GMS or medical card contract from the Health Service
Executive. A contract that allows the Doctor to be paid to treat
medical card patients. Applications for inclusion on this specialist
register are all referred by the Medical Council to the Irish College of
General Practioners in Dublin; membership of that college is the
easiest and most common way for a Doctor to obtain the approval of
the ICGP, access the specialist register and 'ownership' of a list of medical card patients.
Emergency
emergency! Universal GP care is upon the horizon, free GP care to
under 6's is on the way, and only those doctors on the Specialist
Register can avail of contracts new and old! But what of the several
hundred doctors who are not on the specialist register, but are on
the older General Register. Doctors such as myself who can see and treat
medical card patients as locums or in the out of hours, but cannot avail of a list or a GMS contract?
Don't panic,
don’t be afraid, Irish Capitalism ICGP has come up with a plan that will calm
your fears of exclusion. They (The College and the Council) call it the alternative
route, a mechanism
whereby doctors can become members of the Irish College of General
Practice, and thereby obtain the all essential GMS contract and list. The
process is in three steps, an interview, submission of a portfolio
and a multiple choice test submitted upon a piece of paper that is
corrected by an automated machine. The price tag? A
mere 7100.00 Euro. (no extra zeros). The usual delusion of everybody being a winner invariably applies to institutional corruption of the Irish variety. Locums and single handed practices usually declare their own taxes, and the college fee is entirely tax deductible. Therefore one can pass the immediate pain onto ones patients in the form of excess consultation fees, and ultimately to the taxman by deducting it from ones taxes. As usual everybody wins! Or at least thats what is believed.
On
to the practice of the noble profession. So the tax take for the
government is in the region of 30 billion, the budget for the
department of health 2013 is in the region of 13 billion. As such nearly half
of ones taxes are devoted to health, and yet what does on receive in
return? With the exception of maternity care and childhood
immunisations the PAYE worker must pay one of the highest fees in
the OECD to see a doctor. Almost 40% of the taxes stolen from his
pocket by an inept and corrupt government are devoted to Health and
yet the PAYE worker must pay for every interface with the Health
service. 50-60 Euro for a consultation with the family doctor, if there is
a referral to ancillary services such as; counselling, physiotherapy
or dietician, these too must be paid for privately. If a prescription is given
it is charged at one of the highest prescription charges in the OECD.
On top of the 30-40% of his or her wages that is devoted to health,
40% of the population choose to pay for private health
insurance. A practice and a payment that is clearly indicative of the
reality that the Irish population are indeed a broken people, a
subject population that will in essence not merely tolerate many forms of
political abuse, but actively and enthusiastically embrace that abuse.
On top of their health Insurance premiums, most of
the willing 40% will also pay 150-200 Euro for a consultation with a
consultant physician or surgeon. This private fee is of course not
refundable for most policy holders and after this the insured might
then be permitted to skip the queue for treatment at public
hospitals, that are built and funded by the tax payer and equally by the sixty
percent of the population without medical
insurance.
That
the Irish people can be relied upon not only to tolerate but actively
embrace this kind of state sanctioned abuse, is testimony not
only the intellectual paralysis of the populace, but the extent to
which the Irish people have been quietly oppressed by a political
leadership that is more venal and more corrupt than the colonial
authority it rebelled against almost a century ago.
From
the outer margins of the system in its entirety to the isolated
practice of medicine within the consulting rooms of the typical Irish
physician the system of health delivery and function is entirely
corrupt and morally bankrupt. No where is this more obvious than in
the relations between General Practitioners and the other most
corrupt institution within the state, that of the legal profession.
For example almost every car accident in Ireland is followed by a back pain or a
neck pain that travels to the courts and extracts many many thousands
from insurance companies who simply pass the expense on, in the form
of one of the highest insurance premiums in the OECD. The medical
profession is entirely complicit in the routine practice of fabrication,
where once again 'everyone is a winner'.
How the system works is rather simple.
Minor road traffic accident, following day those who were not at
fault in the collision, present to the General Practitioner with the
usual back and neck pain. The GP makes note of the “symptoms” and
awaits the inevitable letter from the solicitor..., along the lines
of.. “we look forward to receiving your report and undertake to
discharge your fee upon receipt of same.
The
fee for said report is in the region of 200-300 Euro plus the initial
consultation and a few more consultations as the claimants are
generally advised by their counsels to attend the GP for regular
follow-ups, prescriptions for pain killers and if possible a referral
for physiotherapy and a few x-rays and scans for good measure. The role of the GP is simply to document the
subjective symptoms of the claimant, and as long as he or she is
willing to attend and pay a consultation fee these subjective
symptoms are recorded under the auspice of a medical consultation. It
is not the job of the GP to determine the validity of symptoms,
a relatively impossible task at any rate and especially difficult for
a General Practitioner, who is hardly going to argue with his fee
paying patient, whom he or she might have known for many years.
On
more than one occasion I have had patients return for follow-up
consultations where their solicitor has insisted that they be sent
for x-rays or physiotherapy. I have had one solicitor pay for a
patient's physiotherapy out of the ostensible 'kindness' of his own pocket. I have had another solicitor write to me and ask me to amend my report
so as to "improve the value of the claim for the sake of the patient".
The corruption is patent and blatant and unites what are perhaps the two most
corrupted establishments within the state, that of medicine and that of Law.
Yet the vast majority find these practices acceptable, and in
fairness to the claimants, (legitimate and illegitimate alike), there is
no other mechanism to have ones expenses or ones pain addressed other
than a visit to the solicitor and his or her referral to the doctor and thence to the waiting lists of the courts. Much as the regular payment by the state for ones herd of medical milking cows often encourages a disinterested referral to the waiting lists of public hospitals. In Ireland we bemoan the length of the waiting lists of either establishments, yet we lack the intellectual capacity to look deeper into the reality of how they are formed and continue to grow.
One could write a book on the corruption that defines medicine and Law in Ireland however the truth is not as palatable as the daily news that is freshly baked in the ovens of RTE.
When my family and I lived in New Zealand we moved hose 3 times, each time we sold our home and purchased a different one. The process of property conveyancing (buying or selling through a solicitor) is refreshingly different in another country. The process is essentially the same, with the same necessary dependence upon the legal profession, however in New Zealand the legal profession (in addition to the medical profession ) are appropriately regulated. About on or two weeks after each move in new Zealand we would receive a cheque from the solicitor in question for the interest that is accrued upon the mortgage monies that are transferred by bank or individual into the solicitors client account. When we bought our home and our practice in Ireland, I asked the bank, 'to whom does the interest accrue on funds that sit in the solicitors account for as long as the attendant complications with a house sale remain in place..., I was told that the bank did not know, and probably the money sits in a non interest bearing account. If I were an astute solicitor and I am sure there are many throughout the state I would be sure to let one out only when another comes in.. or to keep a healthy amount in my Client account, a mere million at one percent would return 10,00 euro per annum. One wonders at the amount of Client account interest that accrued to the profession during the boom years.
Another refreshing aspect to a regulated legal profession was the fact that the solicitor would tender his or her fee bill before or after the transaction, and was not entitled as they are here in Ireland to simply subtract their fees from their client account, and send the perfunctory and irrefutable 'bill' on whenever it suits.
In many respects one might fairly ask of the legal system, how it can pretend to justice or the addressing of legal grievance when outside of the criminal system the first question that is asked of a victim or someone in need of arbitration by the court..., what is the content and the depth of your pockets? The same may be said of medicine.
These points are merely for illumination of the underlying pathology, the examples of venality, abuse and corruption are rife through medicine, justice, banking and education, the pathology runs deeper than the roots of contemporary media are willing to go. The pathology of brute capitalism does not paralyse other societies in the same way that it paralyses the moral, intellectual and social development of Irish society, because other societies are not burdened with a self imposed duality; a cultural schizophrenia. Instead they embrace their capitalism and regulate it accordingly. In Ireland we have a capitalism that is strictly regulated by an entirely absent but universally professed 'Christian' morality.
The
very practice of medicine itself is compromised by having to practice
it in an Irish context. Of course antibiotics don't treat he flu, yet
how can a GP insist upon this basic reality to a patient who is
expected to shell out some 50-60 Euros at the reception desk
following this consultation? In the same respect if the paying patient wishes to be referred for testing or scanning on the basis of a particular anxiety, how can the Doctor refuse his insured and fee paying patient? Anxiety in a medical context is the most common pathology encountered in General Practice. Ironically it is the most costly diagnosis to make as it can only be entertained once a myriad of expensive scans, blood tests and specialist opinions have been exhausted.
The yearly rates bill for my single handed practice on the main street of Rush
is some 3500 Euro, on top of this I must pay separately for utilities, waste and
water. Each morning I must sweep the rubbish outside my surgery door
where the public refuse bins are perpetually overflowing.
The
corruption in Irish medicine runs from the top to the very bottom.
From a Minister who opens his castle (Laughton House) to the public
each year for a few weeks in order to avail of an 80k tax break.
Himself no longer on the medical register, and yet his GMS contract
is maintained for him by the HSE, who continue to pay mortgages upon
his extensive medical premises in North Dublin, GMS pension contributions, in
addition to a Ministerial salary and ministerial pension. All of which is
entirely above board in an Irish context.
The
extent of the gullibility of the Irish people, of the paralysis that
moved Joyce to write some of the finest works in literature, is
confirmed by the stark reality that 200 years ago Ireland was
governed by Lords who dwelt in castles, were bankrupt and
insisted that we the people must live within our means and tighten their belts.
For
my own part I have chosen to flee this soulless land, lest I too become a zombie.. I can no longer live or work in a
system and a state that is so fundamentally corrupt, one where the
people themselves are either complicit or oblivious to a corruption that ultimately undermines the ideals of almost every public and private institution in the state, from profit driven banks to registered charities.
I recall pictures of old mills in operation, mediaeval
contraptions where oxen or horses are bound to a turnstile and walk
in circles all day long turning the grinding mill wheel without pause or question. I
recall looking at these images thinking how terrible it would be for
a human being to be confined to such a fate. Cursed like Sisyphus pushing his bolder to the top of the hill each day and having it roll to the bottom just when he nears the summit. I had consoled myself in
thinking that whilst animals might tolerate this interminable repetition as a consequence of their
ignorance; humans would rebel as a consequence of their soul and the indomitable spirit of the race. I have
reached the sad conclusion that my country has lost its
soul, its spirit and its vision and I am finding it ever hard to catch my breath in
my own back garden..
