‘You might as well be talking to a Martian’

TRYING to talk to Belfast-based officials about the health crisis here, or other issues impacting Fermanagh, is like talking to someone from another planet, according to those lobbying for the return of services to the county.
Pauline Corrigan from Florencecourt is one of the many hard-working volunteers from the Save Our Acute Services campaign group, which is fighting for the return of emergency surgery to the SWAH.
She is also a Rural Affairs Officer with the Ulster Farmers’ Union (UFU), and is painfully aware of the impact the growing health and services crisis is having on the local rural community.
Over the past two years, through her work with SOAS, Pauline has found a significant lack of understanding from Stormont officials regarding those impacts, however.
“To me, it’s like you might as well be talking to a Martian,” she said. “I’m not joking, you might as well be talking to somebody from Mars as somebody from Belfast, to get them to understand what a rural area means.”
She added she felt Fermanagh and its people were being used as “sacrificial lambs” in a drive to reform the health system across the North.
“People are making decisions about our lives that haven’t got a clue,” she said.
Pauline has invited Belfast-based politicians to visit the county, to show them what the journey from rural parts of the county to Altnagelvin actually entails, but her invite has been ignored.
It is local politicians Pauline and her fellow SOAS volunteers are most upset with, though.
“I believe they must take some sort of a pill when they get elected, to keep them silent,” she said, only half joking. “I feel so let down by them, disappointed with a capital ‘D’.”
Pauline pointed out that in the run-up to the last election, and at local public meetings on the removal of SWAH emergency surgery, local representatives had been “up in arms.” Now, Pauline pointed out, “The fire is gone.”
She also noted the public had been told nothing could be done while the Stormont Executive was suspended. Now that it has been restored, she pointed out they have still done nothing.
While our politicians may not be speaking out, though, Pauline believes the people of Fermanagh will stand up for themselves.
“I believe this is a crescendo,” she said of the SOAS campaign, which she is very proud to be a part of. “There is something coming to a point.”
The next public event being organised by SOAS will take place on November 14 in Enniskillen town centre at 7pm. The candle-lit demonstration will mark two years of the community’s campaigning for the return of emergency surgery to the SWAH.

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