2009 will be a year to remember for all the wrong reasons.
The Fianna Fail/Green Government, with the collaboration of Labour/FG and the union leaders, attacked the poorest and most vulnerable in society, drove down wages & watched while half a million workers joined the dole queue.
Alongside this they bailed out developers and bankers with their NAMA deal and ensured that the tax loopholes that keep the super-wealthy in their mansions and yachts remained untouched.
So far the banks have been directly given over €12 billion of our money and are coming back for more next month.

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At its monthly meeting last night Dublin City Council expressed its solidarity with Council workers involved in industrial action against wage cuts.

The motion proposed by People Before Profit Councillors Brid Smith and Joan Collins said

“This council expresses its solidarity with the workers of DCC engaging in a work to rule starting on 25 January. The aim of the work to rule is to reverse the 17% average pay cut implemented in 2009. The pay cut and the current embargo on recruitment mean that DCC workers are currently working harder for less.

Public sector workers are being unfairly singled out to foot the cost of bailing out the banks. Every cent of the €4 billion savings in Budget 2009 has been poured into the banks. We pledge our full support to the workers of the Council in their work to rule and any ensuing strike action and recognise that any reduction in service from DCC staff is the fault of the current FF/Green Government.”

The motion was passed by 23 to 4. Only Fianna Fail councillors voted against.

Councillor Brid Smith said
“This vote shows there is widespread support for the action being taken by Council workers. Nobody can accept that those who provide essential services to the public should have their pay cut while those who created the economic mess get off scott free.

In a statement today the People Before Profit Alliance announced that Brid Smith, a People Before Profit Dublin City Councillor from Ballyfermot/Drimnagh, will stand for in the election for Dublin’s first directly elected Mayor.

By Cllr Brid Smith, People Before Profit Alliance. Labour and Fine Gael claim to be in opposition to the Government. Yet even though they have a majority on Dublin City Council, they had no problem passing on cuts in this year’s budget. The government has cut funding to the City Council this year by 6.3%. This amounts to a 20% cut in funding to the biggest council in the country since 2008.

This gives elected councillors a choice – to cut funding to housing, local amenities and services, to increase bin charges, rents and others OR to stand up to the Government.

No prizes for guessing which choice was made.

This budget abolished the waiver for bin collection for everybody on social welfare. It increased bin charges for the rest by 5%. In July the Council will impose VAT on all charges including bins by either 13.5% or 21%.

On top of this the budget for the fire service was cut. Funding to the BASE youth project in Ballyfermot was cut. And council rents for subsidiary earners was increased.

The same budget cut the rates for businesses by 2.4% and gave a further hand out to developers by cutting capital spending on social housing and giving extra to the council to lease property from developers. And all council workers have had their pay cut by over 17% in the last year.

At the Dublin City Council Budget meeting on 21 December 2009, Killian Forde proposed the budget as Chair of the Finance SPC and voted in favour of it. As a Sinn Fein member he was apparently, in breach of his party’s mandate. The most controversial content of the budget was the removal of the waiver for social welfare recipients of the waiver on bin lifts (the waiver remains on the standing charge of €95 per annum).

Sinn Fein says he went against the party mandate on the budget given their opposition to the removal of the waiver but this is not the first time that SF councillors voted in differing ways on the budget. In the past a number of their councillors voted for and others against the same budget, all of which contained bin charges. It seems though that this has been a step too far and Forde has resigned from the party saying he would be guilty of “chancery” if he voted against this budget.

Check out Brid's website for the lastest report from the November council meeting at  Dublin City Council - makes for a interesting read!

http://bridsmith.org/dublin-city-council-news/

CAMPAIGN TO STOP CUTS AT CHERRYORCHARD HOSPITAL CONTINUES
Protest March Friday 24 July

Management at Cherry Orchard Hospital confirmed today that up to 20 beds have been closed in the hospital. Patients in receipt of respite care have been moved out of the hospital to private nursing homes in Maynooth and Lucan.

Between 20 and 25 families in the West Dublin area will be affected by this move of patients to private nursing homes. The HSE, despite pleas from management at Cherry Orchard, have refused to recruit the extra nursing staff required to keep respite services in the hospital. Instead they are paying the full commercial rate for private care for public patients.

People Before Councillor, Brid Smith, who is leading the campaign to save the respite services, spoke to management today who confirmed that they cannot guarantee that the beds will re-open in Cherry Orchard in October, as originally stated by the HSE.

By Councillor Brid Smith – People Before Profit Alliance

Respite care in Cherryorchard Hospital is still under threat. Management kept the Beech unit open but have started to move patients out of other wards. They have tried to divide and conquer this community. If they get away with this we will lose the wards forever in Cherryorchard.

The horrific report on Leas Cross shows that elderly people don’t get proper care in private nursing homes. Families in our community are stressed out with worry about their loved ones. Farming old people out to private nursing homes is wrong and it wont save money. We want to keep every bed in our local community hospital

During the Public meeting last night, it has emerged that while the Beech Unit will remain open, the cuts in Cherry Orchard Hospital are continuing. Instead of the Beech Unit closing, the axe is falling on the other units at Cherry Orchard Hospital: Sycamore, Willow and Laurel. A whole new series of patients and families are being affected. Although the exact figures are unclear as of yet we are aware that patients will be moved to private nursing homes from this weekend. Many these patients are suffering from Alzheimers and Dementia and see Cherry Orchard Hospital as their second home.

The HSE are robbing Peter to pay Paul in a cynical attempt to disguise their cuts, changing the wards and the names of those shuffled out to private care. Changing the names will not reduce the stress and trauma involved in such a move for patients and their families. This is another example of how the most vulnerable suffer from the Embargo on staff recruitment in the Health Service. There is a real human cost in all of this, which cannot be hidden by changing the names of the wards that face cuts.