FF, ‘the Party with no health policy’ is part of the problem not the solution – Buttimer

Supplementary health budgets the norm under FF – despite country being awash with money
Fine Gael Cork South Central TD and Chairperson of the Oireachtas Committee on Health and Children, Jerry Buttimer, has today (Monday) dismissed criticism of the Government’s health policy and record on health spending by Fianna Fáil leader and former Minister for Health, Micheál Martin.
“Micheál Martin’s attack on the Government’s health policy is utterly compromised by his Party’s long standing lack of a policy on health. It is also extremely rich for Micheál Martin to criticise the Government for having to introduce supplementary health budgets which have been made necessary by the massive financial constraints this Government has had to work under, as a result of the Fianna Fáil bankrupting the country. Ironically, supplementary health budgets were the norm under Fianna Fáil despite the country then being awash with money.

“Fianna Fáil has absolutely no credibility to talk about the management of our health services or the health budget. In 2010, Fianna Fáil’s last year in Government, the supplementary budget for health was €595 million. And in 2001, when Micheál Martin was Minister for Health and money was plentiful, he required a supplementary budget of €250 million.

“As Micheál Martin knows well the economic legacy of Fianna Fáil is a major part of the problems facing our health service today. It is impossible to talk about the challenges facing the health sector without taking account of the huge budget reductions that have been necessary thanks to Fianna Fáil’s mismanagement of the economy. The health service has endured budget cuts totalling €3.3 billion, while at the same time demand has increased significantly and staff numbers have been reduced by 14,000.

“After Micheál Martin misadventures in the Department of Health, the only policy Fianna Fáil have adopted on health in the last ten years has been to give it as wide a berth as possible. First they outsourced the Department of Health to the PDs and then they went into the last General Election with a manifesto that didn’t even have a health section.

“We’re still waiting for that elusive Fianna Fáil health policy. In April 2013, Micheál Martin published a policy guide promising a ‘detailed document’ on how the health system should work at a later stage. That detailed document still hasn’t materialised.

“The Party did publish a paper authored by Brian Turner, with the now infamous disclaimer, ‘The views expressed in this report are those of the author and do not necessarily represent the views of the School of Economics, University College Cork or Fianna Fáil.’

It is not surprising that Fianna Fáil has steered clear of our health system for the last ten years. It’s leader Micheál Martin’s created the HSE in 2004 while Minister for Health, something he has never been able to live down. The HSE Chief Executive Tony O’Brien this year described the way in which the HSE was set up as being ‘like a high speed car crash’.”