Mick Barry (Cork North Central, Anti-Austerity Alliance) | Oireachtas source

After 70 days we have a Fine Gael and Independent minority Government, but it is a three-legged Government not a two-legged Government. It is a statement of fact that the Fine Gael-Independent minority Government cannot survive without the support of Fianna Fáil, which will prop it up for the lifetime and the duration of this Dáil. Thus, we might say that we have in the form of this new Government a new troika, involving Fine Gael, Independent Members and Fianna Fáil, operating within the straitjacket of the European Union fiscal rules.

I will make a point about the Independent Members in a moment but it is no secret that the two pillars of this Government are Fine Gael on the one hand and Fianna Fáil on the other. The talk about something which is radical and new is somewhat ironic. In reality it is a double helping of the same old, same old.

Many people voted Independent in the general election in February. The vast majority of those people did not vote to put Fine Gael back in. They did not vote to put Deputy Enda Kenny back in as Taoiseach. To echo the point made by my colleague Deputy Coppinger today, those who want something genuinely independent of Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael in future will have to vote left. Of the Independents who are to become senior Ministers, Deputy Denis Naughten is a former Fine Gael Deputy, Deputy Shane Ross is a former Fine Gael councillor, and Deputy Katherine Zappone was nominated to the Seanad by a Fine Gael-Labour Party Administration. If this is a rainbow Government, all the colours in that rainbow are various shades of blue.

When I read the document today the points on health stood out. The new Minister, Deputy Harris, will be in charge of continuing the dismantling of the HSE, turning hospitals into hospital groups and trusts, with hospitals making their own decisions. When I read this I thought I had seen it before somewhere. I went online and found a document produced recently by UNITE, which organises health service workers in England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland. It described the policies implemented in the UK under the rule of new Labour and the Tories. Some of the points in it sound familiar. Every National Health Service hospital was forced to turn into a trust by 2014. Hospitals were set up like businesses, with greater autonomy. That meant they could raise private finance and enter into agreements with the private sector, which led to hospital departments being outsourced, wholesale privatisation and part-privatisation. That is the agenda that the Fine Gael-Independent minority Government, propped up by Fianna Fáil, will pursue in the health service: an agenda of privatisation. It will be vigorously opposed by us and, I am confident, by health service workers as well.

Deputy Leo Varadkar is to take over the Department of Social Protection. I presume he will be responsible for the section of the document that refers to labour activation schemes. One scheme, to be called Fit to Work, will be aimed at people with disabilities and illnesses. This was done recently in the UK. It has been a disaster.

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