Caoimhghín Ó Caoláin (Cavan-Monaghan, Sinn Fein)

I thank Deputy O'Sullivan for sharing time.

My colleague, Sinn Féin councillor Seamus Morris of Nenagh Town Council, has told me that a sign was recently put up outside Nenagh General Hospital, directing children and pregnant women away from the hospital. It is the first time any such sign has appeared in that location and it is ominous for the people of north Tipperary. As the Minister knows, this is a feeling all too familiar to the people of my home county of Monaghan, where exactly the same signage has been in place since March 2001. While that sign was going up in Nenagh to turn away women and children, where was the Minister? She was walking a red carpet rolled out by her friend Ulick McEvaddy at his private, for-profit Vista health unit in Naas. This so-called health campus was built as a business venture by Mr. McEvaddy who, as we recall well, in 1999 hosted both the Minister herself and the former Minister for Finance and fellow Kildare man Charlie McCreevy in his luxury villa in the south of France. It is no wonder Mr. McEvaddy and his likes are the beneficiaries of massive tax breaks courtesy of this Government's health privatisation agenda.

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