Archive News
Man overboard! But Taoiseach ‘hangs tough’ on no more money for health
Date Published: {J}
The Government TDs out in Galway East – Paul Connaughton and Ciaran Cannon (FG) and Labour’s Colm Keaveney – must be glad that those written assurances about the future of Portiuncula Hospital are floating about out there, in light of the drama of the past week.
Now up in Roscommon they would say ‘put not your trust in assurances,’ but the issue of Portiuncula Hospital’s future has not even arisen, it is not one of the ten mentioned as for review of services, and the fact that Accident and Emergency in Roscommon is gone, has made Portiuncula central to services in the adjacent districts.
Those letters assuring Portiuncula’s future, written by Tanaiste Eamon Gilmore and Health Minister Dr James Reilly, are, most importantly, backed-up by the fact that capital and staffing investment in Portiuncula have been kept up during the past few years. In fairness a lot of the pressure due to local TDs who were there over those key years … Paul Connaughton, Ulick Burke, Noel Treacy, and Michael Kitt, the first three of them now retired, the present four sitting Deputies, and activists locally in the hospital action committee.
The investment of capital and staffing money has meant that no one can come along and say ‘gee, I’d love to keep those promises but we have been told by HIQA (The Health and Safety Authority) that it would be unsafe for patients.’ That’s essentially what happened in the past week when Enda Kenny and James Reilly came under pressure on Roscommon.
It was all too much for Roscommon FG Dail Deputy Denis Naughton. Roscommon can now only handle cases such as suspected broken bones from knees to toes, suspected broken bones in arms from collar bones to finger tips, all sprains and strains, injuries to the face, minor burns and scalds, wounds bites and cuts, splinters, foreign bodies in eyes, ears and nose, minor chest injuries.
What Roscommon cannot handle now is – injuries following a fall from any height or from a road traffic accident, head injuries, chest pain, abdominal pain, neck and back injuries, pregnancy related conditions, alcohol/drug related problems, pelvis and hip injuries.
At the weekend in Galway Taoiseach Enda Kenny was not promising any soft options – even though it meant he had to miss the Connacht Final.
Oh I know there was all that guff about having to visit the children in the Gaeltacht, but why do I have the suspicion that, if Ming ‘The Merciless’ TD from Roscommon and the merciless Hospital Action Committee had not threatened in advance they’d be in Hyde Park, then Kenny would have been on the sideline as Taoiseach at a Connacht Final to cheer on his beloved Mayo.
It is a fair indication of the medicine to come that Fine Gael were prepared to lose Denis Naughten TD and that, even in the light of that loss, when Enda Kenny came to Galway on Friday, the only real few moments of relaxation he had was a few jars with the likes of TDs Brian Walsh and Sean Kyne, former Mayor Johnny Mulholland and Councillor Padraig Conneely.
For more, read this week’s Connacht Tribune.
People’s living conditions less than 100 years ago were frightening. We have come a long way. We talk about water charges today, but back then the local District Councils were erecting pumps for local communities and the lovely town of Mountbellew, according to Council minutes, had open sewers,” says Galway County Council archivist Patria McWalter.
Patria believes we “need to take pride in our history, and we should take the same pride in our historical records as we do in our built heritage”. When you see the wealth of material in her care, this belief makes sense.
She is in charge of caring for the rich collection of administrative records owned by Galway County Council and says “these records are as much part of our history as the Rock of Cashel is. They document our lives and our ancestors’ lives. And nobody can plan for the future unless you learn from the past, what worked and what didn’t”.
Archivists and librarians are often unfairly regarded as being dry, academic types, but that’s certainly not true of Patria. Her enthusiasm is infectious as she turns the pages of several minute books from Galway’s Rural District Councils, all of them at least 100 years old.
Part of her role involved cataloguing all the records of the Councils – Ballinasloe, Clifden, Galway, Gort, Loughrea, Mountbellew, Portumna and Tuam. These records mostly consisted of minutes of various meetings.
When she was cataloguing them she realised their worth to local historians and researchers, so she decided to compile a guide to their content. The result is For the Record: The Archives of Galway’s Rural District Councils, which will be a valuable asset to anybody with an interest in history.
Many representatives on these Councils were local personalities and several were arrested during the political upheaval of the era, she explains.
And, ushering in a new era in history, women were allowed to sit on these Rural District Councils – at the time they were not allowed to sit on County Councils.
All of this information is included in Patria’s introductory essay to the attractively produced A4 size guide, which gives a glimpse into how these Rural Councils operated and the way political thinking changed in Ireland during a short 26-year period. In the early 1900s, these Councils supported Home Rule, but by 1920, they were calling for full independence and refusing to recognise the British administration.
“I love the tone,” says Patria of the minutes from meetings. “The language was very emotive.”
That was certainly true of the Gort Rural District Council. At a meeting in 1907, following riots in Dublin at the premiere of JM Synge’s play, The Playboy of the Western World the councillors’ response was vehement. They recorded their decision to “protest most emphatically against the libellous comedy, The Playboy of the Western World, that was belched forth during the past week in the Abbey Theatre, Dublin, under the fostering care of Lady Gregory and Mr Yeats. We congratulate the good people of Dublin in howling down the gross buffoonery and immoral suggestions that are scattered throughout this scandalous performance.
For more from the archives see this week’s Tribunes here
Date Published: 23-Jan-2013
SLIGO 0-9
GALWAY 1-4
FRANK FARRAGHER IN ENNISCRONE
GALWAY’S first serious examination of the 2013 season rather disturbingly ended with a rating well below the 40% pass mark at the idyllic, if rather Siberian, seaside setting of Enniscrone on Sunday last.
The defeat cost Galway a place in the FBD League Final against Leitrim and also put a fair dent on their confidence shield for the bigger tests that lie ahead in February.
There was no fluke element in this success by an understrength Sligo side and by the time Leitrim referee, Frank Flynn, sounded the final whistle, there wasn’t a perished soul in the crowd of about 500 who could question the justice of the outcome.
It is only pre-season and last Sunday’s blast of dry polar winds did remind everyone that this is far from summer football, but make no mistake about it, the match did lay down some very worrying markers for Galway following a couple of victories over below par third level college teams.
Galway did start the game quite positively, leading by four points at the end of a first quarter when they missed as much more, but when Sligo stepped up the tempo of the game in the 10 minutes before half-time, the maroon resistance crumbled with frightening rapidity.
Some of the statistics of the match make for grim perusal. Over the course of the hour, Galway only scored two points from play and they went through a 52 minute period of the match, without raising a white flag – admittedly a late rally did bring them close to a draw but that would have been very rough justice on Sligo.
Sligo were backable at 9/4 coming into this match, the odds being stretched with the ‘missing list’ on Kevin Walsh’s team sheet – Adrian Marren, Stephen Coen, Tony Taylor, Ross Donovan, David Kelly, David Maye, Johnny Davey and Eamon O’Hara, were all marked absent for a variety of reasons.
Walsh has his Sligo side well schooled in the high intensity, close quarters type of football, and the harder Galway tried to go through the short game channels, the more the home side bottled them up.
Galway badly needed to find some variety in their attacking strategy and maybe there is a lot to be said for the traditional Meath style of giving long, quick ball to a full forward line with a big target man on the edge of the square – given Paul Conroy’s prowess close to goal last season, maybe it is time to ‘settle’ on a few basics.
Defensively, Galway were reasonably solid with Gary Sice at centre back probably their best player – he was one of the few men in maroon to deliver decent long ball deep into the attacking zone – while Finian Hanley, Conor Costello and Gary O’Donnell also kept things tight.
For more, read this week’s Connacht Tribune.
Date Published: 23-Jan-2013
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