Marc MacSharry (Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

The Acting Chairman cannot allow this heckling to last five minutes as I have a lot to answer. I always welcome the Minister to the House. I said at the very beginning of this debate and all day how appreciative we are of him making so much time available. He is the only Minister with that kind of record. We have had all the Ministers in the House at different times. He always comes to the House and we genuinely appreciate that.

The Minister stated that I said he was irresponsible. Indeed, he was irresponsible and reckless in the promises made before the election. That is a fact. Those promises were made on the back of a budget of which the current Government and former Opposition was aware. It met the troika just as we did. The cupboard was as bare then as it is now. No one said to Senator O'Keeffe, a candidate for the Dáil at the time, to promise a centre of excellence in Sligo. No one told the Minister to write that letter we heard Senator Leyden read out in respect of the promises to the people of Roscommon. The Government knew the promises were not deliverable . They should not have been promised. That was irresponsible and politically downright reckless. I described it before as political delinquency, and that is what it was.

As much as I welcome my friend and congratulate him on his elevation to Minister of State, and while I have no axe to grind and hold no bars in respect of the former Minister of State, Deputy Shortall, the reality is she resigned for a reason. She was close to it and chose what many of us might feel was an easy option, to shout from the terraces instead of playing on the field, but she did it for a reason. That for me demands, as we say in the motion, that the Minister publish all the documentation to do with these locations. We are all in favour of primary care centres, universal health care and new GP care, but where are they? It does not concern the 20 locations that were chosen, rather it concerns the 15 sites. How did we pick them? If one is in Dundalk, which is 21st in the ranking, one would wonder why its primary care centre location did not get up the curve. We want all 400 of them as quickly as resources will permit. I have no doubt the Minister of State will ensure this is done as quickly as possible, to the extent to which resources are available. However, the reality is that 15 locations were chosen. How were they chosen? I venture it was done on political grounds. It was a case of choosing one for the Minister's constituency and two in Roscommon to look after poor Deputy Feighan who took the bullet Deputy Naughten was not prepared to take.