Mattie McGrath (Tipperary South, Independent) | Oireachtas source

I welcome the Taoiseach back from his sojourn in Europe. I am delighted to take this first opportunity to question him across the floor of the House. I was very interested in his last replies to Deputy Gerry Adams, because I happen to represent one of those places - that is, Tipperary South, which includes part of west Waterford. We have suffered as a result of this cronyism. Fine Gael and its colleagues in the Labour Party promised us a new beginning and an era of greater transparency, honesty and integrity. It must have all washed down the Liffey in the recent floods, because what we are seeing now is the worst type of political cronyism. The HSE boss at the time, Cathal Magee, and Brian Gilroy, with whom I have an excellent relationship, knew nothing about this. Clinicians and other hospital practitioners in the south east region knew nothing either.

We were all buying into the idea, as we were told by the last Government and the HSE, that the way forward was through the development of centres of excellence, one of which would be located at Waterford Regional Hospital.

All the consultants and everybody down to the porters bought into this and were working towards that. We let services go, as did Kilkenny, Wexford and Clonmel in the case of South Tipperary General Hospital, so that we would have the centre of excellence in Waterford. We heard rumours before Christmas that there was a change of plan and that Kilkenny might align itself with Dublin. We received assurances from the Minister that this was not true. Thanks to our good journalists who made the enquiries under FOI, we found out that political cronyism was flying at its best. We never saw anything like it before. The Ministers for the Environment and Local Government and Public Expenditure and Reform had contacted the Minister for Health and were pulling at the hems all the time. Will the Taoiseach give us a guarantee that he will stop and out this? I know the two of them came to the Taoiseach's rescue and saved his bacon two years ago but this is not fair to the people of the south east or any other region who want patient care and not political slush funds in which the Government is involved in respect of the HSE and its funding with an eye to the next election because it knows its policies have failed in so many other areas, as was referred to recently in respect of the EU.

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