YOU might have thought that Michael Noonan would leave one of the troublesome ministries of recent administrations without a backward glance.
But this is not so. The Fine Gael TD for Limerick East - unlike his Labour predecessor Brendan Howlin - wishes to return to the fray at the Department of Health providing his party is returned to government after the general election.
"I would like to find myself back in government as a senior cabinet minister. Of course, it is up to the Taoiseach, but if he decides to send me back to Health, I would be more than happy to take it," he insists.
"I have been here two years and to make the kind of impact I want to make in improving the health services I would like a full term. I have a lot done but I have a lot of work in hand as well, which I would like to see through. It is a fine ministry; there is hardly any one more relevant to people.
"It is said that people are no longer interested in politics but they are certainly interested in the health services. It is not possible to go out for a drink at night or go for a walk without someone coming up to me and saying something about the health services. Their comments are usually fairly positive as well."
Mr Noonan had been known as a safe pair of hands, a cute Limerick politician with a sharp tongue and good sense of humour. But the unrelenting and critical focus of the past year in Health has taken its toll and he has appeared less than good humoured on a number of occasions. However, the recent publication of the hepatitis C report has obviously lessened the pressure and he appears more relaxed and even tempered.
It has been a tough time, lurching from one difficulty to another blood scandals, health insurance, the nurses strike and now the threatened industrial action by ambulance drivers and paramedics.
It has been a "rough ride", rougher, he says, than when he was Minister for Justice in the early 1980s and subject to "unrelenting criticism".
"I am in politics a while. When I was in the Department of Justice in 1982, I went through that period when Justice was in the papers every day of the week and the Provisional IRA campaign was being pursued very strongly. That was the time of some of the hunger strikes.
"You remember Nicky Kelly on hunger strike, coming off it, and subsequently I released him. It was a very controversial decision.
"It was the time of the Don Tidey kidnapping and the unfortunate shooting of recruit Garda Gary Sheehan and Cpl Kelly in Ballinamore in Leitrim. These were extremely difficult situations very heart rending situation. I was constantly in the political focus at that time.
Looking forward, he is focused on the general election and has been making preparations in his Limerick constituency. He is pleased that the present Coalition partners will fight the election together as a government and hopes they will return to form another.
The choice will be clear cut, he says, the present line up or a Fianna Fail PD coalition.
FOR the first time in a very long number of years, the public will have a direct say in the election of the government. I don't go with the theory that the only question for the voter should be who they want to represent them in Dail Eireann and then allow the elected TD to arrange the government for the citizens.
"I think that, as well as selecting the particular TD that a voter wants to be represented by, there should be a clear choice of which government they want and who is going to be Taoiseach. There has been too much of a raffle system in the past and there is no doubt that there were a lot of people who were disappointed the last time, because they did not vote for a Fianna Fail Labour coalition."
What will bring the present Government back in, he believes, is the realisation that the Coalition partners have done a good job. However, in modern Ireland, he points out, people do not simply look to the record but also to the future.
A government does not win elections by reminding people of its record, he asserts. The public expects the government to address the problems of the day and those that are foreseeable. "There has too be a forward agenda."
Asked to be more specific about the "forward agenda", he would only say: "You don't expect me to reveal our election manifesto".
He does not believe that the identity of Fine Gael has become subsumed within the Coalition, despite the Taoiseach's recent remarks about the party not having any policies of its own when questioned about its stance on group water schemes.
"The Taoiseach was making a very good constitutional point. The Taoiseach of the country and Fine Gael Cabinet Ministers have only one policy, Government policy. You cannot have a situation where a Taoiseach and his ministers are going around saying well, that is the government policy but we have a different one ourselves'."
HE WAS pointing out the ridiculousness of adopting that position. "That does not mean that Fine Gael will not have its own policy input to the election and have its own ideas. But that was strictly the point he was making and I think it was a very fair point and one I would fully back him on.
"It is one of the things that has given such coherence and unity to the Government. Once the Government decides an issue, that is Government policy and the parties no, longer take up party positions".
Mr Noonan, credited with securing the passage of the abortion information legislation in 1995, has managed to largely stay out of the most recent abortion controversy. But when pressed on whether there should be another abortion referendum, he is adamant there should not.
"I think it is far too complicated to be resolved by a sentence in the Constitution. That was tried in 1983 and failed. If anything it made the situation worse.
"I think the Dail committee will give general advice on how we should proceed. It will probably be legislative change rather than another referendum. I don't want to prejudge their deliberations but certainly nothing is going to happen in the life of this Government, maybe in the next one.
"The most recent controversy, has arisen from an allegation that an abortion was performed in Dublin. I do not know whether the DPP will be carrying the case forward, but supposing that he did carry a case under the 1861 Act, it seems to me likely that it could be appealed all the way to the Supreme Court.
The financial fall out from the £100 million pay settlement with the nurses will not be as bad for State finances as originally thought, he says. The Department of Health, which has a budget of £2.5 billion, will have to find savings of £8 million.
"Proinsias De Rossa has been so effective in controlling the numbers on the live register there are a lot of savings projected for Social Welfare that were not there even at Budget time. So there is £25 million being supplied by Social Welfare and then there are bits taken off all Departments."
HE says the Department of Health is "a little fortunate to have just completed a report" which shows that the £8 million can come from savings from a common purchasing policy by the health boards. In a full year, well over £15 million can be saved once this policy is introduced.
"The nursing issue was an extremely difficult one. I have a sister who is a nurse and there is not a family in the country that does not have a nurse in it. Nothing was done for 15 years, and in that time the whole medical profession had changed.
"The combination of the Labour Court recommendations together with the commission will make huge improvements in nursing. At the end of the day, it is motivated nurses that are the key to the hospital system. That will improve the health services."
On other industrial fronts there are problems with paramedics, ambulance drivers and environmental health officers, all aware that a general election is approaching.
"I see these as industrial relations problems to which solutions must be found. We have had a series of industrial problems and I hope we can solve these without disrupting the services. Of course, we also have the negotiations with the hospital consultants. They have gone into talks now which are due to be finished by the last week of June."
In recent weeks he appointed Mr Derry Hussey as chairman of the VHI. Now he wants the board of the health insurance company to seek a strategic partner. There will shortly be two vacant positions on the board which he intends filling with hospital consultants. The position of people who have been paying premiums to the VHI for years - "many who have never drawn a pound" - must be protected, he insists.
"The chairman of the board and the new acting chief executive have been asked to bring forward a strategic plan at an early date. In my view, the strategic alliance option is one of the options which should be pursued, so I have asked the board to evaluate that.
"Change is necessary in the VHI because it is a hugely important component of the health services in the country: 1.4 million people in Ireland now are VHI subscribers. It is absolutely essential to the public and private mix which we have. I am fully committed to community rating. I want a competitive market but on the basis of a level playing pitch."
He believes the future of the VHI is to "loosen the apron strings" with the Department of Health.
"I believe this for a number of reasons. I don't think that the legal basis of the VHI is satisfactory in a competitive market and I would be hoping, and would be confident, that I could get recommendations from the board as to how that might be changed. If we were going down the road of a strategic alliance, it would certainly be necessary to change the legislative base.
"That change would depend on the nature of the proposition. If they were coming to me on a joint venture basis it would be a different proposition. But I think there is a strong case for a full strategic alliance.
"But no private insurance company is going to come in on a partnership basis if the main policy influence is the Department of Health, through the Minister. That is not the real world. But even if there was not major changes along the lines I am signalling, the whole idea of the Minister for Health being the regulator of the market arising from the 1992 Health Insurance Act is anomalous, too.
MY view is that either the regulatory function is taken up by the Department of Enterprise and Employment, where the regulatory function of the general insurance market is vested, or the apron strings are cut so that the Minister for Health does not have this relationship with the VHI any more and can act as an independent and objective regulator.
"I have no problem in wearing the two hats, but justice must be seen to be done.
Asked about standards in the Irish health service and accountability to the users of that service, Mr Noonan says the greatest lack at the moment is management.
"Nothing systematic has been done to grow new managers. I have just appointed the chairman of the Midland Health Board, Mr Denis Doherty, as director of the Office for Health Management. His primary job is to assess the health boards and voluntary hospitals to find out who are the people with management potential and then fast track them.
"Up to now, managers were drawn very narrowly from administrative grades. I want managers to be drawn from nurses, doctors and consultants. The present managers are quite good but things got so big so quickly. They had to manage all that and all the changes that were occurring."
When he entered office in 1994, Mr Noonan identified cancer treatment as one of his main priorities. He said he would produce a strategy within 12 weeks. It took considerably longer than that, but he cites it now as one of his main achievements.
"It is full steam ahead now. We want to have premature mortalities in the under 65s reduced by 15 per cent between now and the year 2000."
Another area of special interest to him is suicide, particularly the reasons young men take their lives. The report of the Suicide Task Force, he said, is in final draft form and is expected to be published this month.
"This is a very important report. If we cannot identify a commonality of causes in respect of suicide we cannot do anything about it. The only other place I know they have done something similar is in Finland and they have reduced their suicide rates there. If I get a good set of proposals, I will run them hard in Government."