Lucinda gets political new year off to a flying start

World of Politics with Harry McGee

It goes without saying that 2015 is going to be a fascinating year in Irish politics. Already – and the New Year hardly a wet week old – we have already had two portents of things to come.

The first is Lucinda Creighton’s pre-announcement of a new political party. The press conference last week was like a trailer for a movie… ‘Coming to a Polling Booth near you, a new Political Party’.

Lucinda and a cast of minor characters set off on a dangerous mission to win at least 14 seats in the next Dáil. The obstacles are immense: no money; no policies; and no name.

And then at the weekend Enda Kenny and Joan Burton set out their stalls. Each said this year would be different; that the Government would retake the initiative, that an improving economy would benefit the squeezed middle; that there would be cuts in income tax and the hated Universal Social Charge.

So far, so good.

But within nanoseconds of those statements being made the Government faced its first crisis of the year. And it wasn’t a small one or one that hit the Coalition by happenstance or through sheer bad luck.

Acute hospitals always feel the squeeze around the New Year and this was foreseeable. Indeed the new Minister for Health Leo Varadkar had warned about it in December.

But sometimes even when you batten down the hatches you can’t match the hurricane. The crisis when it came was the worst we have seen in a terribly long time in Irish politics – and the trolley and bed shortage issue has been around for 20 years.

The €28 million extra (€25m in the estimates and a further €3m for the end of 2014) was clearly inadequate.

So if they knew about the gathering storm, why did they not act precipitately? Well the problem is a structural one. One of the difficulties is the lack of step-down beds for those (mainly elderly) people who should no longer be in an acute hospital. Put simple, there’s no place for them to go, especially if they are not quite well enough to go home. The Fair Deal scheme is capped which means very hefty supplements out of people’s income (which means that people can’t afford nursing home or home care). Also continuing cutbacks in the health services has reduced the availability of non-hospital residential beds for those who are convalescing.

“It’s not about just throwing money at it. It’s a massively complicated issue,” an insider told me this week. “You need to look for a permanent solution. And that will involve a number of things including providing more beds and perhaps raising, or removing, the cap from Fair Deal.

A taste of things to come?

Well, yes. There’s definitely going to be a lot of topsy-turvy turbulence in the political waters during 2015, as two different currents fight against each other.

For more, read this week’s Connacht Tribune.