Richard Boyd Barrett (Dún Laoghaire, People Before Profit Alliance) | Oireachtas source

Let us set aside the red herrings that the Taoiseach and the Minister for Health might try to throw at us in raising these points. Everyone is delighted to see any hospitals or health care facilities upgraded for the people of Wexford, Kilkenny or anywhere else in the country. The point is that this has occurred against a background in which the Minister has closed 24-hour accident and emergency services in Roscommon, hospitals such as Loughlinstown hospital are threatened with downgrading, ambulance services are being hit in areas such as west Cork and accident and emergency services are being hit in Cork city and other parts of the country. Against that background, it is altogether unacceptable that the Minister should interfere to prioritise certain areas for the political advantage of the Government.

Given the imposition of brutal cuts of hundreds of millions of euro in health care services, there should be absolute transparency and fairness in the allocation of the inadequate resources available. This is an indication that, contrary to the Government's promises to end the era of cronyism and stroke-pulling, cute-hoor politics are alive and well. We see it in this instance and we saw it in the selection of locations for primary care centres. It is clear that questions of political advantage and the need to shore up political bases for particular Deputies have taken precedence over fairness in the allocation of scarce resources for health services. It is shameful. As with the location of the primary care centres, we need to see the criteria that lead the Minister to select some sites over others and to interfere, as he has, in the allocation of scarce health resources.

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