Fianna Fáil Candidates Desperate

I don't know how anyone has the nerve to knock on doors in Waterford as a Fianna Fáil candidate in the upcoming elections.

After the disgraceful demise of our flagship industry Waterford Crystal (while rescuing the private banking industry); After the St. Patricks Hospital debacle (Anna Manahan had it right when she told people to 'have a bucket of water' ready for them!); After our A&E Unit remains the most miserly in the Country; After trying to take medical cards from Old Age Pensioners; After robbing schools of teachers and investment; After ignoring our University application for 3 years and 2 months (so far); After pulling the Gateway Innovation Fund - the only meaningful piece of the National Spatial Strategy; After surfing the decentralisation wave for years only to drop it when even the dogs on the street knew it had been conceived on the back of a brown envelope.

After letting people die, in dirty corridors, while contracting life-threatening diseases in our hospitals; After running the economy for the benefit of their friends in the building community; After running amock with false taxes which they knew would leave us up to our necks in it; After lying their way through the last election.

After further delays in public radiotherapy at WRH (not now due until 2015 at least); After failing to transfer back-up services to WRH as a Centre of Excellence in Breast Cancer; After haemmoraging 1,000 jobs every week; After record unemployment. The list goes on and on and on.

I have noted as I'm sure have many people, the increasingly desperate claims from wanna-be Fianna Fáil Councillors trying to

(a) disassociate themselves from their own partys' policies,
(b) piggy-back with their one-dimensional arguements on issues already in the public domain as if they were the first to ever think of them and,
(c) claim that they are the 'new, fresh faces' for Waterford.

I beg to differ with them on each and all of the above.

As I learned in my 10 year political sojourn to date, if you stand for a party, you are, by extension, standing for their policies. All of their policies. The policies that have farmed out the running of our tragic, disimproving health service to an unaccountable body, answerable to no-one and prepared to continue to hire €200,000+ per year top level administrators while cutting front line services for the elderly in St. Patricks Hospital; while starving WRH of investment while spreading that investment - against HSE policy all over the Region; while moving the deck chairs around on the Titanic and losing eminent Doctors to other locations because they couldn't get their act together here in Waterford.

I was elected for Fianna Fáil 10 years ago and served four years in that party before I resigned in dissappointment and disgust at their treatment of the people of Waterford due to their failure to deliver on their 2002 (9 years ago!!) election promise of public radiotherapy for our cancer patients in Waterford and the South East. I understood that by being a Fianna Fáil Councillor I was giving my implicit support and acceptance of that stand. I refused. If my party had the kind of policies that I could not stand over, then I would not stand for them and so I resigned.

How can the current batch of Fianna Fáil candidates stand over the disgraceful inaction on designating WIT as a University of the South East and thereby denying us our rightful equality and access to a University eduction. The South East is suffering. The South East cannot compete on a level playing pitch. Take any measure you like and you can see it. It is sickening.

If the current batch are as much against their own partys' policies in Government - as they have publicly stated on many issues - then they should not be propagating those policies. They cannot have it both ways. They are either in, and everything that that means, or they are out. You cannot play basketball for one team and duck off to play with the other team every time it suits. That is both dishonest and dishonourable and hopefully, fools no-one.

I know, that there is a core Fianna Fáil vote and that many people will vote for that party regardless of how good, bad or indifferent the candidates are or are not. Regardless of the policies pursued by this government and how they have ignored Waterford - other than for what was in the National Development Plan. They will vote no matter how badly they are running the show, or how many people they hurt or dissappoint. No matter how out of touch they are with how most of us are living - despite their cute statistics which tell us things that our purses and pockets tell us just aren't so.

Would Fianna Fáil please run their own positive campaign, telling us what thay have to offer us, rather than what we are doing wrong (while operating under their rules and strictures, with their priorities and lack of investment). Tell us what they are doing for our hospital. Tell us when they are going to give us our University. Tell us how they will fix the mess they have made. Tell me why I should 'take the pain' for the misery inflicted by them. Tell us why elderly people need to pay for their care in nursing homes while prisoners and rapists and murderers are catered for free.

Tell us why young thugs can freely terrorise communities while the Gárdaí are helpless to stop them. Tell us why people with 30, 40, 50 convictions are still free to rob and maim and ruin peoples' lives. Tell us why child-molestors can live freely in our streets. Tell us why convicted rapists don't automatically go to jail for 15 or so years. Tell us why 'life' doesn't mean 'life'.

Tell us why we get sicker in our hospitals. Tell us why a new geriatric hospital is not built in St. Patricks before the patient numbers are reduced. Tell us. Please, tell us.

Tell us why, on a local level, if they have all the solutions, that they haven't already implemented them seeing as how they are in government.

I'm so annoyed by their arrogance and sheer ignorance in their cherry-picking issues and 'fresh faced' solutions. Please. I don't think there's one of the candidates in my ward has come up with a single new or innovative idea - not that I have seen or heard anyway.

The bottom line is, if you want to run as an Independent, run as an Independent. If you're running for Fianna Fáil, then you take the rough with the smooth. You stand for what they stand for and you must take responsibility for their delivery or lack of delivery for Waterford. No double standards.

In the face of monumental mis-management of Ireland plc., serious lack of investment in Waterford and in ALL of our services, I sincerely hope the electorate turn out in numbers in June to let them know whether they think the Fianna Fáil party has been delivering for Waterford.

Which leads me to another point: USE YOUR VOTE. If people do not come out and use their hard-fought for democratic vote, then they can not complain if the message doesn't get through.

There's only one place to hurt political parties - and that's in the ballot box!