A series of recent announcements by the Minister for Health, Mr Martin, giving extra funding to improve cancer services, may be an indication he expects to be moved in the Cabinet reshuffle, the Government chief whip said yesterday.
Ms Mary Hanafin made the remark at the launch of breast cancer awareness month.
She said of Mr Martin: "He's making an awful lot of announcements, he must think he's going somewhere."
She was referring to an announcement on Friday that €20 million was being provided to extend BreastCheck to the west and south of the country and an announcement on Sunday of €15 million in annual funding for radiation oncology in Galway and Cork.
Ms Hanafin, who has previously served as a junior minister at the Department of Health, said however that she would not be interested in taking on the health portfolio.
"I don't particularly want to be the Minister for Health. I think Micheál (Martin) has done a great job . . . and trying to match him I think will be difficult," she said. On who might succeed Mr Martin if he is moved, she said: "I couldn't put a name on that person."
Asked if she believed the Taoiseach, Mr Ahern, would consider giving the health ministry to the Progressive Democrats given that the Tánaiste and PD leader, Ms Harney, is on record as saying she would be interested in the job, Ms Hanafin said Ms Harney was a good minister and a reforming minister and that health was a reforming department. "We work very well as partners in Government (with the PDs) so it's not so much it going to one party or the other because Government policy is Government policy and whoever is there will implement that," Ms Hanafin said.
Mr Martin has repeatedly refused to say where he wants to be after the Cabinet reshuffle planned for the end of this month. Whether he stays in health or goes is, he says, a matter for the Taoiseach.