Health ministry: A poisoned chalice?

James Reilly does not rate highly with many people as health minister, but who would want his job, asks Catherine Shanahan.

FOR A flavour of how the general public ranks our health minister, log onto popular health consumer website irishhealth.com

An online poll conducted by the website in March asking respondents to grade James Reilly’s performance during his first three years in the job recorded a resounding thumbs down. Seven in 10 rated him “poor”. A miserable 4% considered him “very good”. The bulk of the remainder rated him “average”.