The Minister for Health, Mr Martin, yesterday shrugged off suggestions that a raft of announcements he was making in relation to funding to equip and staff idle healthcare facilities and improve cancer services were an indication he was getting ready to leave the Department of Health at the end of the month.
Mr Martin also stressed that whether he stayed on as Health Minister after the Cabinet reshuffle on September 29th was a matter for the Taoiseach, Mr Ahern.
Yesterday he held a press briefing to announce almost €85 million was being allocated to opening a long list of idle healthcare facilities, including a number of new accident and emergency units across the State.
Their idle status, because there was no money to staff and equip them, was the subject of controversy in the run-up to the local elections in June.
Mr Martin said the opening of the units in Cork, Galway, Mayo, Roscommon, Naas, Mullingar, Birr, Portlaoise, Letterkenny, Clonmel, Wexford and Dublin would result in over 200 additional beds. Some 1,200 extra staff would be employed to run the units, he confirmed, explaining that agreement had been reached with the Department of Finance to lift the embargo on recruitment in the health service to facilitate the opening of the units.
Within weeks of Fianna Fáil getting a battering in the local elections, Mr Martin had reached agreement with the Minister for Finance, Mr McCreevy, on funding for the phased opening of the units.
He told The Irish Times in July they would be opened on a phased basis over a two-year period. Yesterday he confirmed some would be open in weeks.
Some of the package, such as funds for radiotherapy services in Galway and Cork, had already been announced at the weekend.
Details of the package were also relayed to members of Fianna Fáil at the party's two-day meeting in west Cork last week.
The new units, built with some €400 million from the National Development Fund, will result in an extra 40,000 patients being seen as in-patients or day patients in a full year, Mr Martin said.
Furthermore, he said he had agreed a €2.5 billion capital development programme with the Department of Finance for the next five years.
It includes funds for the new Cork blood centre and a number of ongoing projects at hospitals such as the Mater and Crumlin.
When it was put to him that the Government chief whip, Ms Mary Hanafin, had said he was making so many announcements, he must have thought "he's going somewhere", Mr Martin said he had received a text message yesterday from Ms Hanafin saying she would in future "keep her off-the-cuff attempts at humour to herself".
Labour's health spokeswoman Ms Liz McManus welcomed the funding, but said she hoped it was not "just an unachievable swansong of a Minister on the cusp of leaving his job".
The Irish Nurses Organisation said the new facilities must be opened without delay. It said there were 138 patients on trolleys awaiting admission to A&E units in the eastern region yesterday morning. Its general secretary, Mr Liam Doran, said the challenge now was to recruit and retain the additional nursing and other frontline staff required.