Peter McVerry talks about the spirit of Dickens

Peter McVerry writes a column in today's Irish Times. Below is a paragraph from the piece.

"And how do you drain all compassion from the public services? By removing the decision-making as far as possible from the client so the hardship and tears that result will not influence the decision-making process. Compassion cannot be allowed to interfere with the budgetary arithmetic. Nobody (I hope) could look a parent in the eye and tell them that their medical card has been withdrawn. So you get people to fill out forms and send them to an anonymous person who informs them of the bad news by letter. To add to the pain, the Department of Health then announces that the same budgetary arithmetic is able to give medical cards to healthy children in wealthy families."