Undermined for telling the truth - Health minister rebuked

Taoiseach Enda Kenny’s insistence that the real focus of his rebuke to recently-appointed Health Minister Leo Varadkar was the negativity — or objectivity if you prefer — that shaped the briefing report given to the new minister by civil servants is not credible.

Mr Kenny’s ire may have been provoked by the uncomfortable fact that plans he supported forcefully when proposed by the health minister he axed, Dr James Reilly, once one of his Praetorian guard, were rubbished when assessed by officials freed from the influence of their chief advocate. It is probably naive to imagine that other issues are not in play.

It is more than unfortunate too that Mr Varadkar has, in the two months since he was passed Irish politics’ poisoned chalice, been so undermined for doing no more than stating the obvious; for doing no more than saying that health reform could not be delivered as quickly as had been suggested. His warning earlier this week to Fine Gael colleagues that there should not be any more cuts in the health sector, which Mr Kenny slapped down as trying to pre-empt budget decisions, could hardly have been unexpected for three reasons.