A Jewish member of the Dail, Mr Alan Shatter (FG, Dublin South), called on the Minister for Foreign Affairs, Mr Cowen, to say whether he viewed the formation of a government in Austria which included the far-right Freedom Party as impacting on relationships between this State and Austria.
He also asked the Minister to state whether any action was proposed by the Government to express its disapproval of the developments which had occurred.
Earlier, Mr Shatter, who was speaking on a Labour Party motion demanding action to improve health services, accused Mr Cowen of scandalous conduct in his final days as Minister for Health.
Personnel who had been headhunted and employed by the National Disease Surveillance Centre had been recruited on the basis that it would be based in Dublin. But on the day prior to his appointment as Minister for Foreign Affairs, the chairman of the centre's board had been informed by the Department of Health that a decision had been made by Mr Cowen to transfer the centre to Tullamore Hospital. No public announcement had been made of the Minister's decision and no explanation had been offered.
"It is clear that while the government may lamely attempt to justify this action on the basis of its commitment to decentralisation, in the context of the agency concerned, and the location to which it is being sent, it is nothing more than parish pump politics at its worst.
"If the Government persists with implementing this proposal, it is likely that most, if not all of the staff recruited to the NDSC over the past 12 months, will seek other positions.
"A newly-established national institution has been treated by the Government as little more than a parting political gift to his local town by a departing Minister given to commemorate his time in the Department of Health.
Mr Shatter said that instead of putting patients first, the Minister for Health had targeted the sick and implemented policies to penalise them. Increases by the Government in the cost of private beds in public hospitals had guaranteed that private health insurance payment would rise by 9 per cent again this year.
