The revelations contained in today’s Sunday Independent are extremely worrying. It is clear that despite numerous warnings from the head of the HSE about the scale of the cuts proposed in the Health budget and their impact on patient care and safety, the then Minister for Health James Reilly and Taoiseach Enda Kenny, in his role as chair of the Cabinet Sub Committee on Health, went ahead and approved them. What is more concerning is the fact that it appears that the Taoiseach deliberately misled the public about the removal of medical cards from people with serious illnesses and disabilities. The matter was consistently raised in the Dáil and the Seanad over the past two years and the Taoiseach, along with senior Cabinet Ministers, denied that any policy to cut medical cards existed. Now it’s emerged that a target to remove 225,000 cards was contained in the HSE’s final service plan for 2014, something the Taoiseach simply must have been aware of. While the Taoiseach was busy covering up and refuting planned medical card culls, his deputy leader and former Health Minister James Reilly was re-writing the HSE service plan, specifically requesting that certain bullet points, paragraphs and tables be amended to appear more palatable and to suit the Government’s political agenda. This is a clear manipulation of the system and is completely unacceptable. Did the Taoiseach know about this interference and did he condone it? Immediate clarification is needed and importantly, some honesty rather than the usual political spin would be nice!
Posted on: Sun, 14 Sep 2014 12:17:52 +0000
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