Seanad debates

Wednesday, 22 October 2003

National Task Force on Medical Staffing: Statements.

 

Increasingly, I believe we should not have the Minister for Health and Children in the House when talking about health. Health policy is being dictated by the Department of Finance, not only in terms of funding. The Department of Finance established and funded at least one of the studies we have been discussing recently. Its approach is that having generated the report, it also has responsibility for it. Apart from the extraordinary centralism of that view, it also makes it entirely meaningless for a well intentioned Minister to come to the House and outline policies, with which many of us would not, in principle, disagree, when there is not a squeak from the funding Department about how it proposes to provide the funding needed to offer the type of services that would perhaps persuade people to accept the logic of the Hanly report.

Comments

No comments

Log in or join to post a public comment.