Spoken As A True Republican.

Martin Ferris TD highlights cost of withdrawing medical cards

14th May

Speaking in the Dáil tonight on Sinn Féin’s motion to stop cuts in discretionary medical cards, the party’s TD for Kerry North West Limerick, Martin Ferris TD said:

“What is the definition around the Fine Gael and Labour cabinet table of a hard case? Would it be, for example, a couple in my own constituency?  

“She has asthma. He has a heart condition and high blood pressure. They had their cards taken away and during every one of the months it took to get them back, they had to make hard decisions.

“What decision was that? It was which of them would get their medication and which of them would hope for the best, as they could not afford to fill the prescriptions for both of them.

“They came to the decision that her inhalers were the most important. He ended up in hospital with a stroke, as he had gone without his blood thinning medication for so long.

“Would that be a hard case, minister? Would that be a case that is causing concern? Leaving aside human compassion and decency, it is saving no one any money that instead of giving the man his medication, the health service now has the greater cost and use of resources of treating him in hospital for a stroke.”

ENDS

Text of speech by Martin Ferris TD on private members’ business on discretionary medical cards – check against delivery

It seems that nowadays I am standing up here more often and talking, even pleading, with ministers about the distress I am seeing in my constituency and in the people who approach me for help.

There is a single, clear message coming from this government: if you are in trouble, you are on your own.

If your mother needs care, if your child has special needs, if you have lost your job, if you have an accident, if your child gets into trouble, whatever it is, don’t come looking for support or help from this government.

No. If you have a problem you can pay to resolve it, or go away, even if that problem is a long-term, terminal, painful or immobilising medical condition or disease.

If you have no money to pay - then tough, this government is about balancing books, the bible according to the Troika, and after that - not humanity, not solidarity, not compassion, not ordinary human decency comes into it.

The minister, the Taoiseach and the Tánaiste have stood here in this house and told us, again and again, that there was no change in criteria for the issuing (or more commonly the withdrawal) of discretionary medical cards, even though we know that in 2009 the rate of discretionary medical cards was 1 in 18, but last year it had dropped to 1 in 33.

The minister knows this too and it is shame upon shame on him. As the election campaign progressed over the past few weeks and Fine Gael and Labour canvassers had the temerity to knock on people’s doors, they were told again and again of the suffering the withdrawal of medical cards was causing.

They got windy then and James Reilly got roasted at a Fine Gael parliamentary party meeting. That’s when we began to hear about a third tier and the amazing discovery by the Minister that what he called “some hard cases” which were causing “concern” and then referred to “administrative” problems.

I’d love to know what he calls a “hard case”. What is the definition around the Fine Gael and Labour cabinet table of a hard case? Would it be, for example, like a couple in my own constituency.  She has asthma. He has a heart condition and high blood pressure. They had their cards taken away and during every one of the months it took to get them back, they had to make hard decisions.

What decision was that? It was which of them would get their medication and which of them would hope for the best, as they could not afford to fill the prescriptions for both of them.

They came to the decision that her inhalers were the most important. He ended up in hospital with a stroke as he had gone without his blood thinning medication for so long.

Would that be a hard case, minister? Would that be a case that is causing concern? Leaving aside human compassion and decency, it is saving no one any money that instead of giving the man his medication, the health service now has the greater cost and use of resources of treating him in hospital for a stroke.

There is not a TD in this house or a canvasser going from door to door that has not heard about the suffering, hardship and stress that this is causing.

In the circumstances, I see how James Reilly was quoted in the Irish Examiner as saying “My main concern is two-fold — number one, that people get the care they need but number two, to protect the taxpayer.”

To protect the taxpayer against what Minister?

Do you really expect us to believe that people are feigning illness to get a medical card, in order to pull off some sort of a scam?

In your anxiety to root out some kind of imaginary scam on behalf of the taxpayer, you have ignored the advice of those in the front line of the health service: the family doctor, the local GP, the men and women who are calling again and again for the resources to run a proper primary care service.

Best practise internationally, expert reports and recommendations and simple cop on, indicates that a properly funded and resourced primary care service is the least expensive and most efficient way to keep your population healthy. It is the way to go to stop people getting seriously ill and the most effective vehicle for health promotion.

It is the cheapest way by far, in money and in resources to achieve a healthy population. GPs are banging their heads against that particular wall for years, begging to be properly supported to provide that service and still, Minister Reilly goes on about protecting the taxpayer from people getting medical cards, while ignoring those pleas.

The essence of this motion is respect, compassion, consultation and transparency. I urge all members to support it.  

Sinn Féin Mountmellick – Serving The Community

International Press Coverage Of Gerry Adams Politically Motivated Arrest

Adams: What are my accusers' motives?

Press TV 8^th May

 My recent detention and interrogation was a serious attempt to bring charges against me. It was conducted by the retrospective major investigation team (Remit) of the Police Service of Northern Ireland, which is based at Carrickfergus, County Antrim.

I had contacted the PSNI in March to tell them I was available to meet them. This followed another intense round of the media speculation that has tried to link me to the killing in 1972 of Jean McConville. It is part of a sustained malicious, untruthful and sinister campaign going back many years.

Last Monday the PSNI said it wanted to speak to me. I was concerned about the timing. Sinn Féin is currently involved in very important EU and local government elections. Notwithstanding this, I travelled to the Antrim serious crime suite where I arrived at 8.05pm.

En route I talked to the senior investigating officer. He was insisting that I meet him in the car park opposite the PSNI barracks. He told me that I must get into a squad car and that he would then arrest me and drive me into the barracks. He said he couldn't arrest me inside the barracks under the legislation.

I told him I was going directly to the station of my own accord, voluntarily. As it turned out there is no legislative bar on me being arrested within the station. And subsequently that's exactly what happened.

My solicitor was present. I was escorted by two detectives from Remit to the serious crime suite. A custody sergeant took me through all of the processes and protocols. My belt, tie, comb, watch, Fáinne and Easter Lily pins were removed. My solicitor made representations that I be allowed to keep my pen and notebook given that the offence that I was accused of occurred 42 years ago. After some toing and froing, I was eventually granted this request by the custody superintendent.

Shortly before the first of 33 taped interviews, I was served with a pre-interview brief. This accused me of IRA membership and conspiracy in the murder of Jean McConville. It also claimed that the PSNI had new evidential material to put to me. The interview commenced at 10.55pm. Two interrogators – a man and a woman – conducted all the interrogations. All of this was recorded and videotaped. My private consultations with my solicitor may also have been covertly recorded.

I was told that the interrogations were an evidence-gathering process, and that the police would be making the case that I was a member of the IRA; that I had a senior IRA managerial role in Belfast at the time of Jean McConville's abduction; and that I was therefore bound to know about her killing. I challenged my interrogators to produce the new evidential material. They said that this would happen at a later interview but they wanted to take me through my childhood, family history and so on. Over the following four days it became clear that the objective of the interviews was to get to the point where they could charge me with IRA membership and thereby link me to the McConville case. The membership charge was clearly their principal goal. The interrogators made no secret of this. At one point the male detective described their plan as "a stage-managed approach". It later transpired that it was a phased strategy, with nine different phases.

The first phases dealt with my family history of republican activism. My own early involvement in Sinn Féin as a teenager – when it was a banned organization. My time in the 1960s in the civil rights movement and various housing action groups in west Belfast, the pogroms of 1969 and the start of the Troubles.

It was asserted that I was guilty of IRA membership through association because of my family background – my friends. They referred to countless pieces of "open source" material that, they said, linked me to the IRA. These were anonymous newspaper articles from 1971 and 1972, photographs of Martin McGuinness and me at republican funerals, and books about the period.

If any of these claimed I was in the IRA, then that was, according to my interrogators, evidence. They consistently cast up my habit of referring to friends as "comrades". This, they said, was evidence of IRA membership. They claimed I was turned by special branch during interrogations in Belfast's Palace Barracks in 1972 and that I became an MI5 agent! They also spoke about the peace talks in 1972, and my periods of internment and imprisonment in Long Kesh. This was presented as "bad-character evidence".

Much of the interrogations concerned Boston College's so-called Belfast Project conceived by Paul Bew – a university lecturer and a former adviser to the former unionist leader David Trimble – and run by Ed Moloney and Anthony McIntyre.

Both Moloney and McIntyre are opponents of the Sinn Féin leadership and our strategy, and have interviewed former republicans who are also hostile. These former republicans have accused us of betrayal and have said we should be shot because of our support for the Good Friday agreement and policing.

The allegation of conspiracy in the killing of Mrs McConville is based almost exclusively on hearsay from unnamed alleged Boston College interviewees but mainly from the late Dolours Price and Brendan Hughes. Other alleged interviewees were identified only by a letter of the alphabet, eg interviewee R or Y. It has been claimed by prosecutors in court that one of these is Ivor Bell, although the interrogators told me he has denied the allegations.

I rejected all allegations made about me in the Boston tapes, which have now been totally discredited. Historians from the college have made it clear that this "never was a Boston College History Department project". A spokesman for the college has confirmed that it would be prepared to hand back interviews to those involved.

I am innocent of any involvement in the abduction, killing or burial of Mrs McConville, or of IRA membership. I have never disassociated myself from the IRA and I never will, but I am not uncritical of IRA actions and particularly the terrible injustice inflicted on Mrs McConville and her family. I very much regret what happened to them and their mother and understand the antipathy they feel towards republicans.

This case raises in a stark way the need for the legacy issues of the past to be addressed in a victim-centered way. Sinn Féin is committed to dealing with the past, including the issue of victims and their families. We have put forward our own proposals for an independent international truth recovery process, which both governments have rejected. We have also signed up for the compromise proposals presented by US envoys Richard Haass and Meghan O'Sullivan. The two unionist parties and the British government have not.

Sinn Féin is for policing. There is no doubt about this. Civic, accountable, public service policing. It has not been achieved yet.

During my interrogation, no new evidential material, indeed no evidence of any kind, was produced. When I was being released I made a formal complaint about aspects of my interrogation. My arrest and the very serious attempt to charge me with IRA membership is damaging to the peace process and the political institutions.

There is only one way for our society to go, and that is forward.I am a united Irelander. I want to live in a citizen-centered, rights-based society. There is now a peaceful and democratic way to achieve this. The two governments are guarantors of the Good Friday agreement. They have failed in this responsibility. The future belongs to everyone. So, as well as the British and Irish governments, civic society, church leaders, trade unions, the media, academia and private citizens must find a way to provide positive leadership.

The Good Friday agreement is the people's agreement. It does not belong to the elites. It must be defended, implemented and promoted.

Yes, deal with the past. Yes, deal with victims. But the focus needs to be on the future. There will be bumps on that road. There will be diversions. There are powerful vested interests who have not bought into the peace process. Obstacles will be erected, but we must build the peace and see off sinister forces against equality and justice for everyone.

SRK/MAM/MHB

Sinn Féin Mountmellick – Serving The Community

Ireland 2014 "Political Policing Follows Endemic Corruption, Economic Collapse And 6 Years Of Austerity"

PSNI cabal agenda negative and destructive – Martin McGuinness

Martin McGuinness

Deputy First Minister Martin McGuinness MLA has accused the British government and elements of the PSNI of “pursuing a negative and destructive political agenda”. Mr. McGuinness said:

“Yesterday I said that the timing of the arrest of Gerry Adams was politically motivated.

Today’s decision by the PSNI to seek an extension confirms me in my view. The arrest of Gerry Adams at this time is inextricably linked to the Local Government and EU elections that will take place across this island in three weeks.

Sinn Féin fully supports the fair and democratic implementation of policing and justice but it is clear that there are elements of the PSNI – what some in that force have described to us as the Dark Side – who continue to work to a negative and anti-peace process agenda and are involved in political policing.

Peter Robinson has said that if the police have evidence and don’t act on it that this would be political policing.

The British Secretary of State claims that no one should be above the law. I agree with both statements but the reality is much different.

There is clear evidence of political policing and of the difference of approach and treatment taken in dealing with those who are members or former members of British state forces and those who are republican and nationalist.

- For example: the British Parachute Regiment murdered 14 people on the streets of Derry in 1972. The PSNI know the soldiers who did this. Have they acted on this evidence? No. Is this political policing? Yes it is.

- The PSNI know who killed 11 civilians in Ballymurphy in 1971. Not one has been arrested. Is this political policing? Yes it is.

- Last week Theresa Villiers told the Ballymurphy families there would be no review of their cases. Is this political interference? Yes it is.

- The British Government refuses to provide information and evidence it has on the Dublin/Monaghan bombings which killed 33 citizens. Is this political interference in the justice system? Yes it is.

- In a key note speech two weeks ago, the British Secretary of State criticised what she described as the one sided focus on state killings. Is this political interference in policing and the justice system? Yes it is.

The indisputable fact is that for 40 years there has been a virtual amnesty for British state forces involved in killing citizens both directly and through state collusion with unionist death squads.

There are many progressive and open-minded elements in the new policing arrangements who are wedded to accountable and impartial policing.

I want to emphasis my absolute support for them in their efforts to deliver impartial and accountable policing.

But there is a small cabal in the PSNI who have a different agenda – a negative and destructive agenda to both the peace process and to Sinn Féin.

Sinn Féin under the leadership of Gerry Adams will not allow these elements to succeed.

Sinn Féin Mountmellick – Serving The Community