Leo Varadkar carries out U-turn on sacking promise

Minister for Health Leo Varadkar has backed down on his threat that a high-level public servant would have to be sacked if the trolley crisis in hospitals is not fixed.

He now says an email he sent three weeks ago, which warned “a head or heads will have to roll” if the situation didn’t improve, was “just an expression of my personal frustration”.

In the email, revealed in The Irish Times this week, Mr Varadkar told senior health officials “we’ll need an official/executive head to roll [before the election] or there is no accountability”.

However, interviewed on RTÉ Radio today, the Minister said he doesn’t have the authority to dismiss anyone other than his personal staff.

He said he didn’t believe heads should roll if there wasn’t a significant improvement, and added he “didn’t want to get into blaming particular individuals”.

Wrong message

Asked whether underperforming staff should be moved, Mr Varadkar said this would send the wrong message.

He declined to set a target by which the number of trolleys will be reduced and said his aim was that “things aren’t as bad as they were last year”.

At the start of the year, the aim was that no more than 70 patients a day spent more than nine hours on a trolley, but this was going to be very difficult to achieve, he said.

Fianna Fáil health spokesman Billy Kelleher accused the Minister of performing "a straightforward U-turn" on his email comments and criticised his failure to set a target for trolley numbers.