Timmy Dooley (Clare, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

Will the Minister do the same? Will he give Government backbenchers the wherewithal to explain the tough decisions that have to be taken and to say it is not a budgetary issue if that is the case and if services have to be reduced in a particular area, that this is being done from a patient safety point of view or in the best interests of the patient? If that is not the case and it does not stand up to the clinical view of doctors, the Minister should say it is a budgetary issue and that he has prioritised some other aspect of spending or that other areas of public expenditure are more important to his Administration than the services he is reducing in particular hospitals.

However, he should not try - as has his colleague sitting beside him - to hide behind the excuse that someone else caused all these problems and the Government is there to clear it up. The Minister still has a commitment to deliver an effective and required health service to the people. The Minister is now making these choices, which are not being made by people who are independent of the political system. The Minister has accepted control and is taking it.

The Minister should also explain a couple of points. When in opposition, his party referred negatively to the reconfiguration process, particularly in respect of the removal of acute surgery from smaller hospitals and its centralisation in the tertiary and main hospitals. As part of that negative political campaign, the Minister's party supported certain catch cries along the lines that, in the case of Ennis General Hospital, were such services removed and were the bypass protocols put in place, 20 people per year would die. The Minister's backbench colleagues put posters in their windows advertising that fact. The Minister should answer a couple of questions in respect of that particular campaign. If there was truth or validity to such arguments, then 33 people have died in the constituency I represent since the Minister took office. What has the Minister done to correct this and to row back on the decisions that led to those deaths? I do not believe that 33 people have died and I do not believe it was an incorrect decision to reconfigure the surgical services. In copperfastening my view and given the benefit the Minister now has in sitting in the Department of Health as chief bottle washer, can he now confirm this was political rhetoric on the part of his colleagues? Can he confirm he fed into such rhetoric on a daily and weekly basis in this House? Can he confirm the then Leader of the Opposition and current Taoiseach fed into it when he visited County Clare and other counties, such as Roscommon, Sligo and so on, where he fanned the flames of fear in the minds of the constituents?

I object to the approach the Minister is taking for that reason. I saw a wry smile on the faces of the Minister and his colleagues when I first stated I did not bear him any ill will. I still do not but my support for a motion of no confidence in the Minister is aimed at the Government and the outrageous and cynical approach its parties took during the weeks and months before the election in an attempt to buy it. Moreover, they did not need to do so.

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