DIFFERENCES OVER policy have led to tensions within the Coalition in recent weeks, Minister for Agriculture, Food and the Marine, Simon Coveney has confirmed.
“There has been friction. There are some very strong personalities in both parties,” he said.
Mr Coveney is the first Cabinet Minister openly to acknowledges tensions between the governing parties. He admitted the Coalition has made mistakes as a Government, pointing to the spate of leaks in the run up to the budget, describing them as regrettable.
One recent dispute concerned the setting of fees for GPs involved in the winter flu vaccination campaign.
In a letter to Fine Gael Minister for Health James Reilly, Labour’s Minister of State with responsibility for primary care, Róisín Shortall, expressed deep unhappiness at how this process had been handled.
In the letter emailed to Dr Reilly on October 21st, and seen by this newspaper, Ms Shortall said he had refused four requests to speak to her about fees to be set for GPs administering the winter flu vaccine. Ms Shortall also said it was “unacceptable” that she had been cut out of this process.
The dispute centred on delays in setting reduced fees for GPs to administer the vaccine. A month earlier the Department of Health had for the first time allowed pharmacists to administer the same vaccine and had set a new lower payment level.
In her email, Ms Shortall said she wanted “to express my entire dissatisfaction with the manner in which the issue of the winter flu vaccine fee for GPs is being handled.
“I have tried to speak with you personally on several occasions over the past 48 hours. You refused each of these requests. You did arrange to speak with me by telephone this morning at 10am but I received no call. I have also over that time been endeavouring to speak with the secretary general and in spite of leaving messages with his office and emailing him, I have not had the courtesy of a reply.”
GPs had previously been paid €42 for administering the vaccine. However, the Department of Health had set a new rate of €15 for pharmacists.
“As Minister of State with responsibility for primary care, it is completely unacceptable that I have been excluded from an area of responsibility that I would have expected would have come under my remit.”
On October 25th, Dr Reilly told the Dáil that the fee for GPs was to be cut from €42 to €28.50.
On the same day he replied to Ms Shortall’s email which he said he had seen only the day before. He said there appeared to have been a misunderstanding about who was going to telephone whom about the GP fee issue the previous week.
Mr Coveney said there had been tensions between Ministers, solely about policy issues. He said the fact that both parties had Ministers with outspoken and divergent views had contributed to this.
However, he added that those tensions, in addition to mutual respect between Ministers from both parties, had led to strong unity around all major decisions once they had been made.
“There are some different views in policy areas. There have been some robust discussions at times,” he said.
Mr Coveney said the disagreements around the Cabinet table had never become personalised, or had ever been “nasty or spiteful”.
Another Labour Minister, speaking on the basis of anonymity, confirmed there had been tensions on policy grounds.
“We have a constant battle reminding our colleagues on the other side that the Fine Gael manifesto is not the programme for government. We have to continuously remind them that policies being proposed are not what was agreed in the programme,” the Minister told The Irish Times.