Your Vote and the Future of Healthcare

dublin | politics / elections | event notice Wednesday February 16, 2011 18:57 by Darragh O'Connor - Claiming Our Future - Dublin Central dubcentral at claimingourfuture dot ie 087 2501730

Dublin Centreal Candidates & Constituents Public Meeting

Dublin Central constituency election candidates will face the voters at a public meeting on ‘Your Vote and the Future of Health Care’ at 6.30pm on Tuesday 22nd February. The meeting takes place at the Mater Hospital’s Freeman Auditorium (Main entrance, Eccles Street).

Health Debate Poster

Sara Burke, author of 'Irish Apartheid: Healthcare Inequality in Ireland,' will also speak at the meeting, which is organised by the Dublin Central group of the national movement Claiming Our Future.

Darragh O’Connor of Claiming Our Future urged health service users and staff to turn up to quiz their prospective TDs on their policies for the health services. “This is a rare opportunity for Dublin Central voters, including health service users and staff, to put their views directly to candidates and find out what they intend to do about one of the biggest issues in this general election - the shortcomings and inequality in our health services,” he said.

Claiming Our Future has called for universal provision of health care, care for children and care for older people.

Claiming Our Future local groups are holding at least 20 public meetings across the country to quiz election candidates on their policies. The movement recently published a summary of its policy priorities, which were first agreed at Ireland’s first ‘Citizen’s Forum’ last autumn. The priorities include:

• A sustainable alternative to the boom-and-bust economy
• A more equal society
• Political reform
• Decent and sustainable jobs
• Radical reform of the banking system and
• Public service reform.

Claiming Our Future is made up of individuals and organisations that believe the economic crisis is an opportunity to reassert the progressive social values of equality, sustainability, inclusion and human dignity. It was initially developed by Is Feidir Linn, the Irish Congress of Trade Unions, environmental groups, the TASC think tank and Social Justice Ireland, it now involves a much wider range of organisations including community groups, youth groups, rural networks, social justice groups and organisations representing older people, global justice, migrant workers, students, cultural initiatives, women, people with disabilities and social media.