Billy Kelleher (Cork North Central, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I thank the Minister for his reply. Two weeks ago, the then Minister of State, Deputy Shortall, made a statement in the Dáil. There were two items of interest in that statement, one being the omission of any support for the Minister in the motion of confidence he faced. She did not mention the Minister for Health by name or by office in any part of her contribution. The other key issue of interest was the former Minister of State's statement that the public had a right to expect decisions on health to have a structure and that staffing decisions would be made in the public interest and based on health need and would not be driven by other concerns.

There are clearly other concerns at stake here. Originally, 20 primary care centres were selected according to the deprivation index. The Minister subsequently stated that others should be added to ensure that GPs could not hold the process to ransom. I can understand that. The most obvious scenario, however, would have been to take the next 15 choices on the list, if the Minister were to proceed with the 20 high-priority projects that had been selected according to the deprivation index. However, halfway through he changed the criteria to allow others be included.

Public private partnerships confer commercial advantage. The State enters into a contract with individuals or an entity and this confers a commercial advantage on them.

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