Seán Ó Fearghaíl (Kildare South, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

The Taoiseach has undoubtedly been busy. I have some questions about the Cabinet Committee on Health. The Taoiseach told us some time ago that this committee was going to drive forward reform as identified in the Fine Gael manifesto and the programme for Government.

The universal health insurance process was the major plank of reform the Government identified, together with the abolition of the Health Service Executive but given that it has now abandoned the universal health insurance objective and while continuing to describe the HSE as a failure, it has failed to abolish it, what is the Cabinet Committee on Health achieving? Does the Taoiseach accept that the reform programme has been exposed as nothing more than a recipe for massive charges to the public and worse services in many areas of the health service? What are his views on the new idea of the Minister for Health, Deputy Varadkar, that the health service should be run through health trusts and that management of health services might be privatised in circumstances where delivery does not meet his view of what it should be?

The Minister for Health is generally regarded as a very talented member of the Cabinet and the public welcomed his appointment to the Department of Health, expecting that he would deliver radical reform. It now feels, however, that rather than being a leader of health reform, he has become a lead commentator on the health service. Will the Taoiseach be in a position to do anything about that?

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