FG defends health reform plan

Fine Gael has defended its proposals to reform the health service following criticism from Siptu that they would result in the HSE being "sold off".

The party's health spokesman Dr James Reilly said the plan published yesterday prioritised the protection of frontline services and put the patient first.

He was responding to comments by Siptu branch organiser Paul Bell on Fine Gael's Reinventing Government plan, which proposes dismantling the HSE amongst over reforms.

Dr Reilly said it was a "fundamental misunderstanding" of the plan to think that putting the patient at the centre of health budgeting and providing universal health insurance could be equated with privatising the health service.

"By changing hospital budgets to ‘money follows the patient’ we will end the obscenity of patients having their operations cancelled and ridiculous waiting times for medical procedures. This will truly make it a patient-centred service as the patient will become king under a new system of ‘no patient, no payment’," Dr Reilly said.

Speaking on RTÉ's Morning Ireland , Mr Bell said he had been “inundated” with calls and text messages from members of his union concerned about the Fine Gael plan. Under the Government’s proposal announced last week, there would be 5,000 voluntary redunancies in the HSE.

Under the Fine Gael plan, however, there were concerns the service would suffer a loss of 28,000 employees.

Dr Reilly said, however, it was "disingenuous in the extreme" to suggest that 28,000 redundancies would take place in the HSE, when Reinventing Government envisaged a "targeted reduction" of 30,000 staff across the whole public sector.

“The UK Trust model which Fine Gael will introduce for our hospitals that are currently in public ownership will ensure representation for patients, staff, community groups and elected representatives, thus ensuring far more local autonomy and supporting the ‘not for profit ethos’ that rightly dominates the public and voluntary hospital sector," he said.

The plan would ensure "a smooth transition that will protect the front line and patients at all times".

"Thus some staff will take voluntary redundancy, some will redeploy to the front line and some will move over to the insurance companies."

Mr Bell had expressed concern that the plan would involve the health service being “sold off” to private insurance companies.

“In the Croke Park agreement, there is no provision for the surrendering of the public health service to insurance companies,” he said.

He said that agreement between the Government and the social partners contained commitments that the public health service would “reconfigure”.

This would throw up a number of voluntary redundancies and retirements over a four- to five-year period.

“And from there, the health service will be modernised and will be able to deal with the demand of the Irish public.”

He said the Croke Park agreement focused on wage security, but “most fundamentally it talks about job security”.

“At the end of the day the trade union movement wants universal access to health services…and we will work within the Croke Park agreement to try and reconfigure and streamline the health service”.

Separately, Socialist Party councillor Mick Barry said the Fine Gael plan was a “Thatcherite document which would privatise Ireland’s health service and push unemployment over the 500,000 mark”.

Mr Barry asked the Labour Party to explain to its voters how it could go into a coalition government “with a party that promoted such a hard-line right-wing agenda