Micheál Martin (Cork South Central, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

The Government's decision to delay the implementation plan for Sláintecare is deeply cynical. The Government wanted to avoid a winter crisis last year but more importantly, it wanted to avoid the Estimates and the provision that would have been necessary for the establishment of an office, the development of an implementation plan, the changes to budgets and so on. This was all referenced subsequently by the HSE's director general. We are now hearing, as confirmed by the Taoiseach, that the plans will be announced in two to three weeks' time but surely the plan should be announced to the Oireachtas Committee that was responsible for the development of Sláintecare. Will the Taoiseach or the Minister for Health commit to going before that committee to announce the plans to its members and chairperson? Otherwise, we will just see yet another Government signature launch with over the top claims, days of strategically placed articles in newspapers, active partisan briefing and so on. It is stretching credibility to a considerable degree that it would take 18 months to publish implementation plans. Perhaps this suggests that deep down and behind the scenes, despite the public announcements, the Government's heart is not in the Sláintecare plan and that it is not going to implement key elements of same.

Yesterday the Taoiseach said that costings for the global footprint strategy were not mentioned at the launch of the strategy but were included in a follow-up document. I ask the Taoiseach to give us an assurance that he will produce detailed, year to year spending and activity proposals for Sláintecare when he is announcing the implementation plans. Sláintecare represents the formal burying of the failed experiment of moving to compulsory health insurance initiated by the former Minister for Health, now Senator James Reilly, and followed up by the Taoiseach when he was Minister for Health. While off the record briefings regularly distanced the Taoiseach from this policy, the record shows a long series of measures announced by him which he said represented the steps in implementing the plan. If one looks at the massive increases in waiting lists during that period, there is a perfect correlation between the so-called reforms and increases in waiting times and delays in accident and emergency departments. Has any work been undertaken to undo the damage caused by many of these ill-fated changes?

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