Leo Varadkar accused of deflecting blame for HSE failures

Health Minister Leo Varadkar has been accused of trying to shift the blame for HSE failures after he threatened in an email that senior “heads would role” if the trolley crisis was repeated this winter.

Fianna Fáil accused the minister of being behind the leak of the memo in a “cynical” bid to make him appear tough. In a reference to the controversy surrounding the departure of former garda commissioner Martin Callinan, Fianna Fáil leader Micheál Martin said the minister was preparing to “do a Callinan” on his officials.

“The minister and the Government have the neck, at the end of their term in office, when they had no blueprint coming in, when their reform proposals were pie in the sky with no substance or depth to say that they will do a ‘Martin Callinan’ on it, they will do a ‘Fennelly’ on it: when all else fails, to save our political hide we are going to sack people, we are going to sack civil servants; that will look good; that is good public relations,” Mr Martin told the Dáil.