Unhealthy strokes from a minister who hasn’t delivered right medicine

JAMES REILLY has done something remarkable.

The Fine Gael deputy leader and Minister for Health has managed to offer Fianna Fáil the opportunity to take a position on the high moral ground, one it has seized enthusiastically.

Opposition leader Micheál Martin, who does not have the most distinguished record as a former holder of the health ministry, apart from introducing the smoking ban, is promising another vote of no confidence in the minister, this time next March (the earliest time possible as there must be a six month gap after a previous failed attempt). He may succeed only in embarrassing, rather than removing, the minister, but that he has considered it worthwhile to promise the move, four months in advance of when the vote can be taken, shows how low Reilly’s stock has fallen.

The release of documents last weekend under the Freedom of Information Act has confirmed what most people believed anyway as a result of earlier revelations: Reilly engaged in a political stroke when he added Swords and Balbriggan in his constituency as locations for the construction of primary care health centres, the evening before the official announcement of nationwide selections was made.

Reilly gave all the excuses in the world for his actions. Others have been doing so also on his behalf, albeit through gritted teeth I’d imagine. His Fine Gael party leader, Taoiseach Enda Kenny, has more than repaid the loyalty Reilly showed him during the failed 2010 party heave against Kenny’s leadership (and which led to Reilly’s promotion to deputy leader). Kenny was required to talk in Dáil this week about deprivation indices, accommodation assessments, competition, GP co-operation, GP-to-population ratios and other criteria in a desperate attempt to make Reilly’s stroke look legitimate. It’s all nonsense.

There were to be 20 such centres and both Swords and Balbriggan came nowhere near getting on the list. The list was extended to 35 and even then they would not have made it, had Reilly not intervened to change what his former junior minister Roisín Shortall and the HSE had decided, based on sound criteria.

Shortall has shown herself to be a politician of some integrity in this whole sorry affair. She resigned rather than be patronised by Reilly and become complicit in his actions, notwithstanding the shameful lack of support from her Labour party leader Eamon Gilmore, who put coalition stability ahead of party loyalty. She did so after first seeking explanations from Reilly but she was fobbed off, with the help of a letter, written not by Reilly, but by the department secretary it has emerged. She had to listen to Reilly tell the Dáil in October that the rationale behind the decision was a “logistical logarithmic progression”. She was kind when she told Marion Finucane last weekend that the since released documentation showed this justification to be “codswallop”.

Martin was able to express himself in stronger language in the Dáil this week. “This documentation gives the lie to the many convoluted excuses and justifications that Minister Reilly and his colleagues gave in the Dáil and elsewhere to claim there was some other criteria used . . . other than pure political patronage,” he said. True, but how ironic to hear a Fianna Fáil minister able to hammer that home.

Martin had asked previously for the documents to be published immediately but this was refused. Then the freedom of information request was delayed. Martin claimed this “illustrates complete contempt for the Dáil, a blatant lack of transparency and we now know why.” It is difficult not to sympathise with this interpretation, to suspect that the Government hoped it would all blow over.

That people have still noticed, and cared, in the midst of the outrage about the handling of the Savita Halappanaver case and the fear surrounding the approaching budget, shows just how badly Reilly has been undermined by his own actions.

On taking office Kenny committed his government to a “new style” of transparent and stroke-free politics. This has been made to look like little more than empty posturing. Fine Gael’s unique selling proposition — that it is not Fianna Fáil — doesn’t work so well when the party’s senior members are perceived to have their snouts in the political pork barrel.

And here’s another issue where we have reason to wonder about what Reilly says. On Tuesday evening he gave a press conference outside Leinster House to brief the media on the Government’s deliberations that day on the findings of the expert group on abortion. Reilly set out the four available options and a timetable. But during his off-the-cuff statement he said legislation would be announced by the Government before Christmas, effectively committing it to one of the four options it said were still under consideration.

When challenged on this Reilly denied he had said it. When Today FM political editor Justin McCarthy politely insisted, correctly, that he had, Reilly replied that if he had then it was a “slip of the tongue”.

Maybe it was, but Reilly is no longer getting the benefit of the doubt. The suspicion remains the Government intends to introduce legislation — as the most logical step — but that Fine Gael needs to soften up some of its own backbench TDs before confirming this.

Earlier that day Reilly had defended his handling of the primary care locations with the following: “I have made it very clear that I stand over what I did and if I had to do it all again I’d do what I did”. No wonder people are sceptical about anything Reilly says.

One of the apparent merits in Reilly’s rapid elevation within Fine Gael was that he came late to conventional politics, somehow making him less interested in making decisions based on naked clientelism. In addition, it was expected he would use his experience as a doctor to make wiser decisions as health minister. Unfortunately, that hasn’t been happening. He has been involved in far too much controversy.

He has had a bad few months. He was the first government minister to be registered in Stubbs Gazette for failure to pay a debt. He, along with four other people, had been ordered by the High Court to pay €1.9m to eight others to settle a dispute about a property transaction involving a private nursing home. He failed to do so. I don’t believe there was anything dishonest in Reilly’s personal actions but he let Kenny down badly.

And whatever about his talents as a medic, Reilly has appeared little better at managing the health department’s finances than his own. The health budget went further and further askew over the year and Reilly’s rescue remedies were too little and too late. It seems extra money will have to be found to plug a hole of around €350m. If that’s the case then how will Reilly deliver promised cuts of €900m next year. It seems beyond him, even if Kenny claims, as he did this week, that Reilly understood “medical politics... and had a clear strategy of where we should be and can be”.

In his 20 months in office Reilly has shown his righteous indignation in opposition, or his experience as a GP has not made for the type of reformer required. He has become a typical politician.

* The Last Word with Matt Cooper is broadcast on 100-102 Today FM, Monday to Friday, 4.30pm to 7pm.