Monday 16 September 2002

Falling through the system. The REAL Northern Ireland.

Hiya. I am Sam - Jules' husband. And before you all run away screaming, she asked me to write this, something from my perspective and here it is. I don’t know what you’ll make of it but you’ve already started reading so you may as well read it all.

A country filled to bursting point with problems and a hate so deep rooted that it stretches beyond the borders of any normal society, Northern Ireland has in every one of its cities pockets of streets where normal society has broken down. It’s not just a question of gradual decline; society stopped working in those areas long ago.

Kids run riot in areas of Belfast night after night, and are backed up by their hard-line parents and the paramilitaries. Night after night people’s homes are burned to the ground, people are shot at and sometimes fatally, blast devices and explosives are thrown at innocent people and the police. Ambulance crews have their lives threatened and have suffered serious brutal assaults with bricks being dropped on their heads. Hospital staff being told that they’ll be dead this time next week. Fire Crews having their equipment and appliances destroyed while responding to emergency calls, while kids are stoning and bricking them and throwing petrol bombs at them. All in a day's work for Northern Ireland.

There is little work in those areas, with kids who are uneducated because they are too busy destroying things. Kids who then turn into unemployed out of work adults who have no money and are angry with their lot in life. Adults who then have no hope of getting employment and then become very angry and direct that rage at those they perceive are ‘getting it better’.

Taking into account the scenes above, the police are not just over-stretched they are suffering serious casualties with a third of the force on sick leave. The Police Service is currently operating with its full-time reserve force and can not meet the demands placed on it, because the man-power is not there. This is a situation that is simply repeated throughout all the public services in Northern Ireland. This situation is perpetuating a lawlessness and disorder not seen in 25 years. It’s getting worse.

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And who should step into this fray, this country gone mad? My beautiful wife who gave up everything she had in Australia to marry me and live with me in the hope of creating something different and better. It seems now as if this country combined with circumstance has robbed us of both our dreams and our hopes. My wife came to live here with me, and I feel that I have cheated her out of a life that may not have been perfect in Australia, but was certainly without three-quarters of the problems here. Now my Jules is taking serious amounts of morphine to control the pain that racks her body every minute because there is nothing anyone can do for us here. We know the medications are not the answer, and we also know that other treatments and care can be administered. The problem is there is nowhere to go; no rehab clinics or support systems, and no-one to administer them. What else can my wife do but take the medications?

Jules arrived here well over a year ago. When we married in February, Jules applied for her UK Visa to enable her to work in this country. We are still waiting, almost nine months have passed and we wait and hear nothing. My brilliant Jules is left in the house each day with little human contact, no medical support, no work whilst taking powerful medications that stop her from being her usual bubbly self and not a single person or organisation exists that can do anything to help her. With that and the problems of Northern Ireland life things are very hard and nothing is coming easy.

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Our latest piece of news is that Jules was told that she will never get the care she needs in Northern Ireland, and as the situation here worsens and the NHS dries up things will get worse. We are now left with no choice, we have to leave the country and sooner rather than later. This is tough because we didn’t get the chance to make things really work out. We have been failed and let down every step of the way.

Thanks to the sense of alienation most people experience in Northern Ireland, I have never felt that I belonged here, that combined with the fact that I’d follow my wife to the ends of the earth makes our path very clear.

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