Varadkar says he agrees with HSE chief’s criticisms

Minister for Health Leo Varadkar has said he largely agrees with the criticisms of the health service expressed by HSE director general Tony O'Brien and has made many of the same points himself.

In a newspaper interview, Mr O’Brien criticised a lack of vision and funding in the health service and increased salaries for healthcare professionals and managers working in it.

‘Central amorphous blob’

The HSE was a badly conceived "centralised amorphous blob that nobody understood" and has had a "death sentence" hanging over it for years without ever being executed, he told the Sunday Business Post.

Mr O’Brien criticised the “growing public, political and media sentiment that healthcare should or can be error-free” and what he called a trend towards “show trials for medical professionals”.

Fianna Fáil health spokesman Billy Kelleher praised the "candour" of the HSE boss and claimed he had "lifted the lid and exposed the true realities of the health service under this Government".

‘No clear vision’

“The fact that we still have no clear vision, plan or credible budgeting for the health service after five years and two ministers under Fine Gael and Labour is really quite extraordinary. The only thing Fine Gael have successfully managed to do over the last five years is to completely abandon their own health strategy.”

Mr Varadkar said the Government’s vision was for universal healthcare and it had a plan to put the building blocks for this in place. “But just like all parts of the public service, health has to operate within the limitations of time, budgets and public pay policy.”