HSE waste

by planetparker

Government cannot condone waste = Brian Cowen

Let’s give it in the neck to vampirism – Count Dracula

Give me chastity and continence – but not yet – St Augustine of Hippo.

Just a sample of the comments about the discovery of a catalogue of waste of public money and serious breaches of corporate governance, financial oversight and procurement” within the Health Service Executive, involving the SKILL programme operated by the HSE in conjunction with the Trades Union SIPTU.

 One can shrug one’s shoulders about dodgy conduct in the HSE, saying “What have they done now?” but SIPTU is one of our largest trade unions. What smells very much like larceny of public funds has occurred with the connivance of its officials. SIPTU should be protecting workers’ rights and conditions; its officials should not be feathering their own nest, either alone or in tandem with others.

 A slogan much used, abused and over-used by New Labour was “Tough on Crime, Tough on the causes of Crime”. What makes people steal? Poverty and deprivation can certainly play their part, though the bewigged perverts of the Judiciary have traditionally dismissed this as a motive. The erudite and opinionated Francis Bacon once wrote “opportunity makes the thief” and certainly temptation can be great, especially if you are starving.  But when those who do the stealing are already financially secure, or far more secure than the rank and file of society, we have to ask this question again. Is it psychological and social deviance, an example of grown up people reverting to their childhood and their desire to stick their tongues out at people? Ort is it something which reflects far more on the rottenness of our institutions and their personnel, be they executive, legislative or judicial? they steal because they think they can get away with it.

 And indeed we do not know the identities of those in the HSE whose lack of financial oversights and managerial competence have led to his debacle. We may never know, but one thing we can be fairly certain about is that they will never face legal or criminal sanction. In other words they will never stand before a member of the Eighteenth-century Themed Fancy Dress Party that is known as the Courts. Even if they did, they will meet up with people who will be unlikely to chastise them. Our judges are not arbiters of the Law, still less of Justice, but Social Policemen – there to ensure that no member of the establishment ever suffers for their misdeeds, and that the only ones who go to prison are the poor – if you don’t believe me, ask the Department of Justice how many “Middle Class” people there are in prison at the moment. Chances are they won’t be able to answer the question. So anyone who has stolen big, and I’m not talking about people who might have been benefiting from a few “nixers” with the labour” and who are guilty bye virtual of simply being poor, will not see the inside of a jail. Heavens, such dreadful places! It would ruin their health, lead to social obloquy as well as expulsion from their golf and rotary clubs.  This is in contrast to France, a truly republican nation, which has no qualms about hailing high0born miscreants. As a result of this unspoken impunity from prosecution, they won’t even be brought before a court. Instead they will be “retired”. This means that they will be given a nice, handsome golden handshake and allowed to ride off into the sunset of consultant land, together with a nice pension. This is their reward for wrongdoing. Surely, if our state wished to dissociated itself from such misdeeds, but yet it did not (maybe for sentimental reasons) wish these people to face a trail, they should just simply be dismissed, without a lump sum, without a pension, and made to experience the reality faced by those vile, horrible ordinary people – who incidentally pay their wages.

 Ask many a white-collar criminal whether they see anything wrong in what they do and they’ll probably answer with a laugh, “getting caught”.” But so many of our white-collar thieves don’t have to worry about being found out. The penalties are, let’s face it, hardly onerous.