Those bubbles might once have been sound bites, now they are the foam formed by a minister gulping for air, writes Gerard Howlin

Fine Gael’s election promises of 2011 turned out to be nothing more than aspiration, with healthcare and the vulnerable all suffering in the meantime.

On the basis of the abysmal failure to radically reform our health service, as so faithfully promised in 2011, Fine Gael deserve not to be re-elected to Government, says Alison O’Connor.

THE Dutch hospital model, of “money follows the patient” which Fine Gael has promised to introduce here, has been criticised as “not effective and not efficient” by a leading academic journal on health policy.

DESPITE a quadrupling of our health budget since 1997, Ireland is ranked 15th among European nations for the quality of its healthcare, and 24th in value terms.