Michael Noonan, Outlined plans for health service
The Fine Gael leader has accused the Government of having total disregard for the health service and the people who work in it. Campaigning in Mullingar today, Michael Noonan said that despite more than doubling health spending from €3bn to €8bn, the system was inefficient and unfair as when the Government went into office.
Mr Noonan was in Mullingar General Hospital and visited a wing which is effectively a concrete shell, built as part of a €45m extension but empty for over five years because it was never kitted out. "If ever there was a monument to the incompetency and disregard for the health service this is it," Mr Noonan said.
He described the Taoiseach as living in fantasy when it came to the health service and accused Mr Ahern's government of presiding over long waiting lists, now over 26,000 people, loss of vital hospital bed time because of nursing shortages and of driving nurses on to the picket lines because of low morale.
Fine Gael, he said, would double the income limits for medical cards, give free GP service to children, under 18's, students and pensioners and give everyone a free annual health check which, he said, would dramatically improve the standard of people's health here.
Meanwhile, Labour's finance spokesman, Derek McDowell, said his party would achieve Fianna Fáil's old age pension target in two years' time, and would also link pension increases to wages growth.
