{"id":329,"date":"2011-11-24T18:13:57","date_gmt":"2011-11-24T18:13:57","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/seancrowe.ie\/home\/targeted-leaks-designed-to-soften-up-opinion-crowe\/"},"modified":"2011-11-24T18:13:57","modified_gmt":"2011-11-24T18:13:57","slug":"targeted-leaks-designed-to-soften-up-opinion-crowe","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/seancrowe.ie\/home\/targeted-leaks-designed-to-soften-up-opinion-crowe\/","title":{"rendered":"Targeted leaks designed to \u201csoften up\u201d opinion \u2013 Crowe"},"content":{"rendered":"

Targeted leaks designed to \u201csoften up\u201d opinion \u2013 Crowe<\/strong> <\/p>\n

Dublin South West Sinn F\u00e9in TD Se\u00e1n Crowe has said the deliberate leaks from the meeting of Health Minister James Reilly with Fine Gael and Labour TDs are designed to \u201csoften up\u201d the public for more health cuts. <\/p>\n

Deputy Crowe said: \u201cThe threatened health cuts \u2018leaked\u2019 from Minister Reilly\u2019s meeting would devastate the public health services. The closure of over 40 HSE care homes in the wake of similar closures in recent weeks; the imposition of a 50 euro charge for medical cards and increases in prescription charges will spell disaster for the old, the sick and those on low incomes.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cThe Government is yet again failing to meet the commitments it made prior to February\u2019s election. If reports are true, the Government is considering a 50 cent per item medical card prescription charge to \u20ac2; introducing a \u20ac50 annual charge for medical card holders; closing over 800 public nursing home beds and shelving plans, announced only last week, to give free GP care to those on the long-term illness scheme from next year.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cThey are also considering cuts in mental health and in home help and it is also rumoured that some people may have their full medical cards taken away and replaced by doctor visit-only cards.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cThe quadrupling of the prescription charge and the new \u20ac50 charge, if implemented, would also do serious damage to the political credibility of Health Minister James Reilly, who back in March promised to abolish the prescription charge introduced the previous year by Mary Harney<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cSome or all of these cuts may be imposed in the Budget. What is certain is that the deliberate leaks from the meeting are designed to soften up public opinion in an effort to prepare people for the worst in the hope that the actual cuts may appear more palatable. <\/p>\n

\u201cThis is all an effort to deceive the public by the Fine Gael\/Labour Government who want people to believe that they have no choices in Budget 2012. That is a lie. Last month they made the choice to pay unguaranteed Anglo-Irish bank bondholders the same amount of money that was cut from the health services in 2011. <\/p>\n

\u201cPeople should not be fooled by this. Health cuts can be resisted and I urge people to follow the example of the communities who have opposed the closure of St Brigid\u2019s nursing home in Crooksling by mobilising support of our public health services.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Targeted leaks designed to \u201csoften up\u201d opinion \u2013 Crowe Dublin South West Sinn F\u00e9in TD Se\u00e1n Crowe has said the deliberate leaks from the meeting of Health Minister James Reilly with Fine Gael and Labour TDs are designed to \u201csoften up\u201d the public for more health cuts. Deputy Crowe said: \u201cThe threatened health cuts \u2018leaked\u2019 […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-329","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/seancrowe.ie\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/329","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/seancrowe.ie\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/seancrowe.ie\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/seancrowe.ie\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/seancrowe.ie\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=329"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/seancrowe.ie\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/329\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/seancrowe.ie\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=329"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/seancrowe.ie\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=329"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/seancrowe.ie\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=329"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}