Kenny: ‘Minister is mudguard for FF and Greens’

FINE Gael leader Enda Kenny told the Dáil he had never expected Mary Harney to do the honourable thing and resign.

“I never expected Minister Harney to quit. This Government doesn’t do resignation. And that culture comes from the top, from a Taoiseach who has lost the confidence of the Irish people but clings to power.”

He said the Taoiseach would continue to support Ms Harney because Fianna Fáil needed her. “Minister Harney is the mudguard that Fianna Fáil, and now the Green Party, uses to protect itself from the chaos that is our health service.

“As long as she is in office they can go back to their constituencies and blame the PD minister,” said Mr Kenny.

He said Ms Harney had “failed to lead our health service, failed to deliver on commitments made by this government and ultimately failed those who use the health service and especially the women of the midlands”.

But the Fine Gael leader said such failure was nothing new. “We are used to Minister Harney’s actions failing to match her words. Three years ago she promised to solve the A&E crisis. Today, 251 people are on trolleys, yesterday 257. That’s 50 more each day than the same days three years ago.

“Minister Harney says again and again she won’t walk off the pitch. The reality is she wasn’t on the pitch when she was needed. To continue the analogy, minister, in any credible functioning, accountable government you would be dropped from the team by now.”

Labour leader Eamon Gilmore said that after three years of Ms Harney as Health Minister and much talk of reform, “we have been left with one of the worst scandals in the long litany of health scandals over which this government has presided”.

The cancer-screening crisis was “literally a matter of life and death”, he added. “For women at risk of breast cancer time is everything. Catching the disease in time. Time spent in fear of what a test result might bring.

“That is the context. That is the setting within which the action, or in some respects total inaction, of the minister must be judged,” he said.

“If the Minister for Health can claim not to have any responsibility in this matter, then one has to question why we have a Minister for Health at all.”

Mr Gilmore also scoffed at Ms Harney’s call on Tuesday night for a bipartisan approach to cancer care.

The Labour leader made clear his party would support the cancer strategy.

But the Government needed to show “basic competence” before the strategy could be fulfilled, he said.

Labour TD Willie Penrose, said his opposition to Ms Harney’s policies was such that he would resign from the party before entering a bipartisan approach on health with her.

Speaking outside the chamber, Sinn Féin Dáil leader Caoimhghín Ó Caoláin also criticised Ms Harney’s policies.