Brian Cowen (Laois-Offaly, Fianna Fail)

There is no problem about that. We have allowed the narrative about health to be dictated in the political culture of this country on the basis of the presumption that we have a perfect system, and if a problem arises, the person with ministerial responsibility should resign on every occasion. We need to bring into our debate that reform is the buzzword of every political progressive and yet when people are involved in trying to implement reforms, too much of the adversarial system in this House enables oppositions of all types, depending on when they are in those benches to take up the views of the vested interests. That often happens because there are many resisters to change and no more so than in the health service. I have heard discussions in the background today about ideological positions, with talk about privatisation and all the rest, which is not relevant to this debate.

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