Gilmore: Government is never easy

Tánaiste Eamon Gilmore downplayed the disruption caused by Róisín Shortall's resignation as he prepared to address the General Assembly of the UN in New York this evening.

Mr Gilmore told reporters at UN headquarters thisy morning that he had been briefed on Dr James Reilly's speech to the Dáil, but stayed on message as regards the primary care centres.

"Government is never easy," he acknowledged when asked about the distraction caused by developments back in Dublin.

"Coalition government isn’t easy. And government at a time of economic crisis is particularly difficult. I think, on the day that the Labour Party decided to participate in this government, I said publicly on that occasion that it was going to be difficult ...

"The job we were given to do is get the country out of the economic hole that we inherited, and we’re going to complete that mandate."

The Tánaiste is set to give his speech to the UN at around 10.30pm Irish time and he revealed that he would be putting a particular focus on human rights.

Mr Gilmore said: "Sometimes the language of international institutions can be a little obscure and what I want to do is I want to focus on people.

"The work that the UN does, the work of our foreign policy, is ultimately about people. It’s about the children and women and men who are being slaughtered by the Assad regime in Syria. The importance of the UN getting an agreed security council position to halt the violence in Syria, to hold those who are responsible for it to account.

"It’s about the children that I met when I was in Mogadishu during the summer living in refugee camps, what we can do to lift them out of poverty and provide some hope for them. It’s about the people whose lives we save and whose lives we improve in the work that we do in our development aid programme."