Minister of State for Small Business John Perry hung up on a live radio interview today when asked about his election commitments to return cancer services to Sligo General Hospital.
The Minister was speaking on Ocean FM's North West Today current affairs programme this morning.
During a discussion on the future of cancer services in the northwest, the Sligo-Leitrim TD was played a clip from an interview he gave during the election campaign.
“We’re very clear on this,” he said in the recording. “In the first programme for government, within the first 100 days, the satellite facility will be restored at Sligo General Hospital.”
Reacting to the clip, the Minister said all the facts would be made available at a press conference on June 17th. When pressed for clarification on the nature of the press conference, the Minster accused the presenter Niall Delaney of having “an agenda”.
“I’m not going to tell you this morning, to be honest, you can be assured of that,” Mr Perry said. “Because if I made one statement, you’ll interpret it quite differently.”
After Delaney again demanded a direct answer on whether cancer services would be restored or not, Mr Perry repeated that the details would be made available at a press conference in June before hanging up.
“You don’t expect anyone to hang up on you,” Delaney said afterwards. “If I’d said something personal or something you’d half understand it . . . but I was just pressing him.”
Speaking after the interview, Mr Perry said he had been making his point clearly on the show but wasn’t making any progress. “It was just the tone of it,” he said. “There was no point in it going any further.”
He also said that the station had introduced "another party" to the discussion with no prior notice, which he felt violated the “terms of the interview”.
The other party was Donegal Sinn Féin councillor Michael McMahon, who had claimed the Minister was typical of the politicians of the previous government and reneging on his promises.
On the future of cancer services at Sligo, the Minister said he was still committed to the issue. “It is a critical service,” he said. “It should never have been removed in the first place, and it was a mistake.”