What the government is really doing

The current titles of our Government departments are almost meaningless. They certainly are bearing increasingly little relevance to their actual tasks.

The Department of Enterprise, Trade and Employment, for example. Seriously? There is no enterprise in Ireland worth talking about, trade's gone down the shitter with the sterling and dollar exchange rates and employment is a distant dream.

So I propose that we start renaming the departments to reflect what the Government is actually doing.

Department of Health and Children:
Department of Privatising and Outsourcing Health

Department of Justice, Equality and Law Reform:
Department of Enabling Nigerian Asylum Scammers and letting Scumbags out on Bail

Department of Foreign Affairs:
Department of Letting Britain run the North and letting Europe run the rest of the country

Department of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food:
Department of Paying Farmers to do Nothing

Department of Social and Family Affairs:
Department of Welfare Tourism for Eastern Europeans

Department of Community, Rural and Gaeltacht Affairs:
Department of Unjustifiable Grants for Pretending to Speak Irish at Home

Department of Transport:
Department of Repeatedly Taxing Motorists

Department of Defence:
Department of the Ministerial Helicopter Taxi Service

Department of Environment, Heritage and Local Government:
Department of Putting Motorways through National Historic Monuments

Department of Arts, Sport and Tourism:
Department of Subsidising Bono and Gerry Ryan, and Begging rich Yanks to Visit

Department of Education and Science:
Department of Subjecting Kids to Squalor and Overcrowding

Department of Communications, Energy and Natural Resources:
Department of Suppressing Broadband and Giving Ireland's Oil and Gas Away for Free

But I imagine you could do better?

What is Steve Staunton?

A spanner is a handy technical implement used for tightening up loose connections and to keep moving parts in good working order.

Steve Staunton is therefore not a spanner.

A muppet is one of an ensemble of entertainers who brought delight and joy to people the world over with their wonderful performances over a number of decades.

Steve Staunton is clearly not a muppet.

The gaffer is the person responsible for overseeing the lighting arrangements on the set of a movie, ensuring that illumination is shed both behind the scenes and on the performance that is broadcast to an audience of millions. The gaffer is often responsible for providing a steady source of power during the performance.

By no stretch of the imagination is Steve Staunton the gaffer.

Steve Staunton has presided over a national embarrassment, squandering national assets and demonstrating a hitherto unknown level of incompetence.

He has shown an utter lack of leadership, has failed to come up with even the simplest forward planning and relies on preposterous excuses to remain in his job, despite huge public unhappiness with his complete lack of achievement.

Obviously, Steve Staunton is actually a cabinet minister.

Just press the button and the machine does the rest...

Minister for profligacy Martin Cullen is likely tearing through more packs of fags than usual today after hearing the news that European hackers are able to hack his 60 million euro machines effortlessly, detect votes as they are cast and even manipulate the results.

Cullen, who championed the introduction of e-voting in the face of vociferous objection from the public and IT experts, will be wondering if he would have been better off spending that money on another round the world trip with his former PR consultant and serial libel litigant Monica Leech (above after being appointed to her latest sinecure with Waterford Chamber of Commerce).

Even at Monica's rather wallet-lightening rate of 1,200 euro per day, Marty could have swanned around the planet with his trusty media guru to hand for nearly 140 years for the same price he paid for the useless hunks of electronics that are now gathering dust throughout the country.

Every so often, we've seen an idea floated as to what can be done with the machines, other than scrapping them or permitting them to languish in storage at the taxpayers' expense. But whether they end up as game consoles in American bars, as was once suggested, one thing is for sure. No one will be using them to vote in this country any time soon.

According to notorious German hackers, the Computer Chaos Club, the machines give off radio waves that could be intercepted by anyone in a 25 metre vicinity, thereby revealing the 'secret' voting choices of the electorate.

And only last week, it appears that their Dutch colleagues, the lobby group "Wij vertrouwen stemcomputers niet" (That's "We don't trust e-voting machines" to you and me) demonstrated on TV how the machines can be easily manipulated, using the very manuals that came with the machines Martin Cullen bought.

"Anyone when given brief access to the devices at any time before the election, can gain complete and virtually undetectable control over the election results," they revealed.

Perhaps Marty should dust the machines off, bite the bullet and take the e-voting vision to phase 2 by having the machines decide our government for us next year. We'll just press a few buttons, and the machines can do the rest.

At least that way, we would have something else to blame than ourselves for having people like Cullen in cabinet.

Suicide is painful

It's world mental health day today.

Normally, I'm don't go in for makey-uppy designated days. After all, Mother is mother all year round and not just some random Sunday chosen by greeting card manufacturers. And it's the same with this day. People suffering from mental ill health do so any time of the year, not just today.

Perhaps someone might want to tell Minister Tim O'Malley (pictured right, staring into space as usual.)

But at least it gives wonderful organisations like The Samaritans and Aware the chance to remind the majority of us who teeter just the right side of insanity most of the time that there is a minority out there who aren't coping.

Among the statistics to emerge today is that one in 13 Irish students suffer from clinical depression. Unlucky for some indeed.

You have to wonder what is really going on in a country experiencing unprecedented wealth, affluence and opportunity when the cream of the crop, the educated, intelligent golden youth, are suffering depression in their thousands and taking their own lives by the hundreds annually.

Last month, two brothers took their own lives in Belfast. One killed himself suddenly, without warning to friends or family, causing the inevitable tidal wave of grief, anger and agony that such deaths always do.

Within weeks, a matter of days really, his brother followed his example. This tragedy, one that is played out in hundreds of Irish homes every year, was particularly acute for the Mailey family, as they had lost not one cherished son but two.

Bravely, the boys' parents spoke out in the media about their unimaginable loss and anguish, in the hope that their pain might alert those suffering from depression to reach out and seek help.

But they did not spare their anger in describing how Mark, suffering dreadfully from the loss of his beloved brother, sought help from doctors and hospitals, only to be fobbed off with weeks of waiting and a handful of tranquilisers.

I fear that their words will fall on many deaf ears, including those who most need to listen - the politicians mismanaging mental health services and the disturbed, depressed and isolated young people who are suffering from mental ill health.

Years ago I ran an information and support service for people bereaved by suicide. I did this voluntarily, but it cost me a lot of money I didn't have.

I did it because people who have lost a loved one to suicide are many times more likely to die by their own hands than the general populace. And at that time in Ireland, there was little or no information, no group support meetings, and certainly no state funding for such services.

I was literally deluged. People who had lost brothers, sisters or parents decades earlier contacted me in tears, the pain as vivid and the loss as acute as it was when the suicide occurred. And then there were the people who had only just lost someone, often a child, and didn't know who to turn to.

The priest offered prayers, the doctor pills. The state offered nothing. The community turned away in an embarrassed silence from them. They came to me. It quickly became apparent that I needed to find counsellors, and lots of them, and to organise support groups for the suicide bereaved.

And I needed funds. But back then, over a decade ago, the state wasn't interested. I couldn't get the funding. I ran out of cash and beyond. I had to close the service and get a job to pay off the debts. In the meantime, the suicide rate hit record levels.

The Government might try to tell you that things have changed since, but they haven't. Last year, the Irish Minister with responsibility for Mental Health - that's the dozy looking chap pictured above - told the Dail "[the] constant reiteration and repetition about the problems in the mental health services is becoming a bit tiresome."

Amazingly, no paranoid schizophrenic unable to access proper care has chosen to kill Minister Tim O'Malley yet. Even more amazingly, he's STILL minister with reponsibility for mental health.

And while we do now have suicide support groups dotted like oases of mental calm around the country, the vast majority of money attached to suicide goes towards medical research. Let me explain something very simply so that even Dim O'Malley will understand:

Suicide is caused by people killing themselves. That's all there is to it. How do you stop people killing themselves? Well, try funding the mental health services for starters.

Mental health funding in the Republic of Ireland has deteriorated to such an extent that disturbed children are held as in-patients in adult psychiatric wards. And they now intend to sell off the grounds of psychiatric hospitals just to pay for the next few years service, such is the demand and the historic lack of investment.

Surely it is now time to divert some of our affluence away from material goods and towards crucial services like these. If you can't get proper help when you need it and reach out for it, like Mark Mailey did in Belfast last month, or if you seek it when young enough only to find yourself in an adult psychiatric ward, what does that say about the morals of the country you are in?

For help or support contact Samaritans call 1850 609090 or email jo@samaritans.org