Fixing the health service - Veto is blocking health recovery

ONE of the standard deflections in our parliamentary culture is the schoolyard put-down thrown across the Dáil chamber at an opponent demanding change: “Ye were in power long enough, why didn’t ye fix it? Why should we do it now?”

As this administration, in one form or another, approaches the seventh anniversary of its ascent to power that argument has lost a bit of its thump and an election may be needed to revitalise it.

Nevertheless, a minor version of it surfaced when at an “emotional” meeting in Leinster House, former health minister James Reilly argued that the law should be changed so HSE managers who fail to properly perform their duties could be fired.