Gilmore: Shortall not sacrificed for stability

Tánaiste Eamon Gilmore stressed the importance of the Government serving out its term to fix the economy as he denied junior health minister Roisín Shortall was sacrificed for the stability of the Coalition.

He made the remarks after a leaked internal party email to Labour members suggested there was another angle to Ms Shortall’s resignation that Mr Gilmore had not made public.

The email was sent by Labour chairman Colm Keaveney this week and said both he and Mr Gilmore had recently discussed challenges facing the party following the resignation.

He wrote: “He [Mr Gilmore] also shared with me his view on recent events and I am satisfied that there is another context to the story that he has not been able to publicly articulate, given the media atmosphere at this time.

“This context needs to be discussed with the party’s members and he is considering how to do that at some point in the future.”

Mr Keaveney also said he had been contacted by party members who had expressed disquiet at the events surrounding the resignation of Ms Shortall. He asked members to suggest ways of improving the party and “fixing problems”.

Addressing the concerns raised by Mr Keaveney yesterday, Mr Gilmore said: “The other context is the state of the country, the fact that we have a job to do as a government to restore our economy and to get our economy to recover and to get people back to work.

“It is hugely important that the country has a stable government in order to do that. And I certainly am going to take my responsibilities seriously and do take my responsibilities seriously to ensure that that stability of government continues, that this government continues, serves out its term and that we do the job that we were elected to do.”

He said issues would arise in the Coalition from time to time but it was his and the Taoiseach’s policy to deal with them in private.

Ms Shortall claimed in an interview on RTÉ last week that she had not received the support of Mr Gilmore or Labour regarding her difficulties with the Department of Health and James Reilly, the health minister.

Despite the emergence of the email yesterday, Mr Gilmore denied his junior Labour minister was allowed to resign for the sake of the Coalition.

“Well first of all Roisín Shortall wasn’t sacrificed at all... She was supported at all times by me and by my office and I have given the detail of the kind of support that she was provided with, to my parliamentary party.”

However, Ray Kavanagh, the former party chairman, said it was known Ms Shortall had been experiencing difficulties for a year.

Earlier, Ruairi Quinn, the education minister, said he was “misled” by the Department of Health over information on the primary care centre site in Balbriggan. Details given to him said the site was chosen by former health minister Mary Harney in 2010, when in fact it was chosen after Dr Reilly became minister.