'Defend Northlands' rally in Derry

In spite of the atrocious weather, the ‘Defend Northlands’ rally in Derry’s Waterloo Place attracted a sizable crowd. 

The event, organised by former Derry City and Strabane District councillor Emmet Doyle (Aontú) took place on Saturday afternoon, to protest the Department of Health’s withdrawal of annual core funding from the city’s Northland’s Addiction Treatment Centre. 

Addressing the crowd, Mr Doyle accused “faceless bureaucrats” of saying Northlands was not important.

“I saw a press release from the Health Minister, who was giving this money out, and he said it was ‘inappropriate’ for him to go back and ask for money for Northlands,” he added.

“I have been working in the public sector for 14 years and if there is money to send people to America for St Patrick’s Day, there is money for Northlands. We are not talking about millions and millions of pounds. What they took from Northlands was less than £70,000 but, it has put them under such pressure they are going to have to take now money that they have saved up for a rainy day and use it to pay the staff and keep the doors open.

“There might be people here, there are certainly people elsewhere that would be dead if it wasn’t for Northlands. It is akin to closing Accident and Emergency in Altnagelvin. That is what the Health Minister is telling us it is ‘not appropriate’ to go back and talk to somebody about.

“I could be political about this but there is no point. I look around today and I see Shaun and Gary, fair play to them for coming - two councillors. There are 38 others, five MLAs, one MP, and I don’t know where they are and I don’t know where they have been either. 

“Sending letters about a service that saves lives and is under attack is not good enough. If I went to my boss at the end of the day and said, ‘I did great work today and sent a letter’ I would be sent home. Why are we accepting that people are not standing up - people who are supposed to be our voices - are not standing up. When it came to Men’s Action Network, they were nowhere to be found. When it comes to mental health services being funded, they are nowhere to be found. It is people like us, all of us, whether we agree or disagree on a whole lot of other things, all know one thing, Northlands has saved lives,” said Mr Doyle, who asked, “Are people going to lose their lives over a very, very small amount of money?”

Derry Anti poverty activist, Sinéad Quinn, who spoke next, said she was “absolutely sick of having to keep fighting to keep the little bit we have.”

“We know Derry has such great need and needs more,” she added.

“There are generations of families who credit Northlands with their sobriety and having got their lives back. I know some of those people and I have talked to them in recent days and they are absolutely flabbergasted that this is even an option that this funding has been lost and I hope they are going to do what we are doing and find their own way to challenge this. 

“I was at a civic assembly in this town over three days in the last month that was organised by Co-operation Ireland and ordinary Derry people in that room decided that mental health and addiction was one of the top issues in this city right now. 

“We decided that we needed more services not less and we also said that there was a lack of real, accessible, well notified engagement on bread and butter issues. It always comes after the fact that you end up doing box ticking. And it really emphasised that there is a real lack of leadership in this city. It is becoming really, really obvious, painfully so, the more these things go on.

“We have had campaigns over the last 10 years for various things in this town and it is always the same people who turn out. We care. But, where are the public representatives that are being paid handsomely to represent the city. This isn’t about party politics. It isn’t about saying to people, ‘We’ll do nothing, you have to do everything’. We want to stand with them but they are never anywhere to be found whenever there is anything going on and that is really, really sad,” said Ms Quinn.

Independent Derry City and Strabane District councillor Gary Donnelly, told the rally he was standing in Waterloo Place as “a grandfather, a father, and a community worker” with his own socialist and Republican politics.

“I believe in fairness for people,” added Cllr Donnelly. “Some people would say this is not political but you can’t get any more political. This is a political decision to neglect services in this part of the country.

“The politicians, I can’t speak for them and I don’t want to speak for them but they are not here and if I was one of them and I was in a political party, then I would find it difficult to stand here and answer the questions and that is simply because they have bought into a system that doesn’t work; it is an administration, it is not a government.

“We shouldn’t need a Northlands Centre. There shouldn’t be one because there should be a proper government with a health service that caters for the needs of the people. 

“There are probably people standing here now who wouldn’t be here had it not been for the Northland’s Centre, children and grandchildren in this city and district,” said Cllr Donnelly.

People Before Profit councillor Shaun Harkin commended and thanked the workers at the Northland’s Centre because “there is nobody in this city that doesn’t have a family member or a friend who hasn’t been helped by the Northland’s Centre.”

He added: “It is genuinely shameful that there is a cut. That money needs to be restored as soon as possible, by whatever means necessary. The Minister can commit to a way of finding the £60,000 so that core funding is returned. 

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“Simply explaining what happened is not good enough because what there is when it comes to funding community organisations, it is a race to the bottom. 

“Where more organisations are applying for funding, where more organisations are getting turned down and what that means is fewer services and the excuse is there is no money.

“But there is money. Stormont has a lot of money. Big armaments, big massive corporations get huge rate cuts and I am talking about not £50, we are talking about hundreds of thousands of pounds. That is what individual organisations, arms manufacturers receive. 

“There is lots of money going into people’s hands that don’t need it. So, whenever we hear this nonsense that there is no money, it is just not true,” said Cllr Harkin.