Friday, November 07, 2008

Some more action on Cervical Cancer

FOLLOWING on from yesterday's fantastic response from angry people to the disgraceful decision to scrap plans for the cervical cancer vaccine, I felt I should try my best to keep this live.

If you have already emailed Harney with a photograph of your daughter (minister's_office@health.irlgov.ie) and emailed your friends and family urging them to do the same, there are another couple of things you can do to keep the pressure on.

You could contact your local Government representative, you will find all their emails on the Oireachtas website and let them know you are not happy. You can also call them to the Dáil by phoning (01) 618 3000 and asking to be connected. Incidentally I have not received any acknowledgement from Harney's office that my correspondence was received, nice work there. I didn't expect much but some kind of 'we received your email' response would be the least I expect. Maybe it was just a hectic day for emails in her office ;)

In addition you can sign the online petition which is doing the rounds and which you can find here and please do send the link on to everyone in your email address book.

Doing one or both of these won't take a huge amount of time but do not underestimate the impact a barrage of phone calls can have, look at the pensioners and medical cards if you don't believe it.

Let's make sure this issue doesn't fade away over the weekend. And thanks to everyone who has helped so far.

8 comments:

Dea said...

Sent my two in as well. Fair play for drawing attention to this.

As for receiving a response, don't count on it. I never heard anything from her department when the whole breast fiasco was going on, even when my TDs brought it up. *SIGH*

Anonymous said...

Hats off to you, Red Mum, for having the initiative to get this campaign under way.

I did blog about it but in my anger with Harney, omitted to acknowledge the important part you've played.

I wonder who Harney will target next? :-(

Anonymous said...

If I were back in my student days, I would be looking at the last election results on:
http://www.electionsireland.org/index.cfm
and picking out TDs from the Government coalition who are very vulnerable to small swings at the next election and I would be urging electors in those constituencies to contact them - preferably with pen and paper, it is taken more seriously if people put effort into their communication.
Online petitions are not taken with any degree of seriousness and gimmicks rarely achieve much. It's votes in ballot boxes that change things and if TDs begin to believe they are losing those, then they will start to move.

Anonymous said...

There's now talk of a protest at the Dail. I'll keep you posted as details come through.

C. K. Kelly Martin said...

I didn't even know about this until reading it here but I signed the petition and will blog about it soon!

Red Mum said...

@Deborah - Still no response and its Tuesday! Not, as you say, that I really expect one.

@Steph - In fairness the credit for this campaign is with Today Fm and the anger obviously felt by people everywhere who did the same as me. I am happy to do my part in it.

@Ian - great idea. The online petition at the very least is a great way to bring people on board.

@Fiona - I had heard about something on Sat. Hopefully it happens. Please do keep me informed.

@C.K. Thanks for that :)

Anonymous said...

another idea might be to request a read receipt with these e-mails. if an official deletes the mail without reading it, you will know and said receipt can be published.

When sending CVs out to recruitment agencies I would request read receipts. one or two of them would come back as being deleted without being read, and it would give the name of the employee who deleted it.

Anonymous said...

J L Pagano sent me. I'm an ex pat, living in the UK, would my signature be of any help?