Tánaiste Eamon Gilmore refused to be drawn further on the primary care centre row this afternoon, despite a new explanation given by Minister for Health James Reilly last night for his decision to add two sites in his constituency to the controversial list.
Commenting at the United Nations in New York, Mr Gilmore would not say if Mr Reilly’s new version of events concerned him.
“Obviously I wasn’t in the Dáil last night… I’ve been briefed on the explanation that [Mr Reilly] has given, but, as I’ve said all through, my focus and the focus of the Government has been to get the primary care centres built.”
Mr Gilmore said people had lost sight of the fact that Ireland is in economic crisis and that it was “a very significant achievement” that the Government had been able to ring-fence funding for the new primary care centres.
“The irony is that if we hadn’t done that we probably wouldn’t be now having questions about how they were chosen,” he said.
Asked if he now considered the case closed, Mr Gilmore paused and said, “There’s work to be done.”
“What has always mattered to me is that we get the reforms in the health service implemented and that we bring about the shift to primary care. We have a programme for government that undertook that we would do that, and I’m determined that we will see that programme for government implemented,” he added.
The Tánaiste will deliver Ireland’s address to the UN General Assembly later tonight during which he will focus on human rights.
“I want to focus on people. The work that the United Nations does, and the work of our foreign policy, is ultimately about people,” he said, speaking to Irish journalists ahead of the event.
“It’s about the children and women and men who are being slaughtered by the Assad regime in Syria, the importance of the UN getting an agreed Security Council position to halt the violence in Syria and to hold those who are responsible for it to account,” he continued.