Austerity missiles launched from Dail Eireann. Who gains?

By Eileen Dublin: In war there are winners and losers and then there are the big time financial winners who gain by providing ‘solutions’ to the destruction and chaos that war imposes. The latest austerity missiles launched from Dail Eireann (Irish Parliament) on behalf of the banksters have landed directly on the lives of men, women, children, the elderly, disabled and the general coping classes. According to Stephen Donnelly Independent TD 3.5 Bn of austerity will transfer into the pockets of the banksters, particlularly the IRBC, (the company created to wind down the assets and liabilities of the former Anglo Irish Bank and Irish Nationwide Building Society). That’s a good chunk of the 5BN euros the government are planning to gift them this year on the promissory note.
Taxing maternity benefit and cutting children’s allowance hit women really hard and imposing a property tax on families already struggling in negative equity with unsustainable mortgages is a tipping point into chaotic personal default. The brazen imbalance where increases in social insurance tax  comes to exactly the same amount for a person earning 25, 000 euros as for a person earning 175,000 euros is jaw dropping in it’s arrogance towards ordinary folk.
To me the most puzzling of all are the cluster bombs of cuts to home help services, respite care ( which these days goes towards paying rising utility costs) and to housing modification grants given to home carers who care for disabled/elderly relatives in their own homes. In life’s impermanence anyone of us could get sick or have an accident that could leave us in need of full time care from a loved one. The basic allowance of 188 euro per week that home carers receive is well documented to save the state millions per annum, When you consider that it costs the state circa 50,000 PA to keep someone in a private care home.
One study shows that carers who work 24/7 for 365 days each year cost the state about 4cent per hour.
So it seems insane that the carers, (who could actually find other’s to cover their heavy responsibilities),  with whom I spoke today at a small protest outside the Dail, and who were all over talk back radio today were so utterly stretched and despairing that they were talking about leaving their relatives to the care of the state. The kind of love
and committment that these people have is extraordinary and the very last thing they want to do is put their loved ones into residential care.
It got me wondering whose going to gain from this? Then I realised that private care homes and privatised nursing care are a growing business here. Even the minister for health himself is heavily invested in the area and the previous government applied tax breaks to those building private nursing homes. Lately a number of  state run nursing homes for the elderly were closed with residents being scattered among private institutions. These residents lost friends and community they’d built up for years.
So how to monetize the love and commitment of carers? Push them over the edge financially and emotionally, privatise the part of the health system that deals in this area, move the clients into the private nursing/care homes which they pay for out of their pensions or out of their estate after death.  Perhaps eventually  there will be a special financial loan product to pay for nursing care. (The elderly also will have an option of deferring their property tax till after their death. Any person who does not pay it, like last year, will be subjected to a tax audit).
As for the young families well it seems to me that chaotic personal default leaves the door open for all kinds of possibilities for manipulating people into ‘solutions’ that will bring financial gain for some.
Research
Budget 2013: Taking €5bn from the people to give to the banks
PRSI to rise by an average of €264
Minister for health scandal lies behind conflict of interest in privatisation
THE country’s largest nursing home company is planning to expand this year as turnover rose 10% to €26 million in 2009.
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property-tax-sting-revenue-will-probe-evaders-finances-
Carers Outraged by Proposed Cut Backs – Carers Association

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