The Fianna Fáil/PD majority on the Oireachtas Health Committee has voted to exclude all criticism of Ministers from its report on the illegal charging of nursing-home residents.
Fine Gael and Labour will today give details of 12 conclusions they had wanted to be inserted into the report but which were kept out by the Government TDs and senators.
The official report, which Fine Gael's health spokesman, Dr Liam Twomey, said yesterday he would find difficult to stand over, will be published tomorrow. Labour's health spokeswoman, Liz McManus, accused the Government of "censorship".
Dr Twomey said yesterday that all efforts to assign "any level of political responsibility to the Minister and junior ministers was vetoed".
He said the points he and Ms McManus had wanted to include were "very reasonable" and "quite straightforward".
"They were not groundbreaking. Much of it was following present legislation, and some followed on from guidelines issued by the Taoiseach himself" to Ministers concerning their responsibilities.
"It was too much for the Government TDs to assign any responsibility to Ministers for running their departments."
Ms McManus said yesterday that "it undermines the possibility of cross-party committees carrying out this kind of work in the future if there is a strong line from the Government preventing consensus being built. This 'winner takes all' approach doesn't serve the public interest."
She said the Government had "railroaded through a report to suit themselves. It doesn't deal with the central issues in my view."
The Fianna Fáil and PD members had been arrogant and had "literally tried to suppress documents that are quite revealing of the views of the Taoiseach and Tánaiste on this issue".
She had voted against the publication of the report because "it doesn't represent the views of the committee in total".
An attempt to attach a minority report to the official one had also been blocked by the Government members, Ms McManus added.
Dr Twomey said the proceedings of the committee in drawing up their report reminded him of what had happened when the Finance Committee, of which he was a member, had discussed the Freedom of Information Act.
"There was plenty of open discussion and debate but as soon as it came to putting something into an official report, the Government vetoed it."
The two main Opposition spokespersons will hold a joint press briefing to publish 12 conclusions relating to the Travers report, which the Fianna Fáil/PD majority on the health committee has refused to include in the committee's report, due to be published tomorrow.