The Department of Health is always a noisy place politically.
Some of the noise over the past few years came from a minister building new plans for a health service while grappling with ever-tightening budgets.
The din now coming from Hawkins House is of a different Minister pulling those plans down, or at least making sure they don’t progress any further.
The demolition job has started to cause unease in Government Buildings, with Taoiseach Enda Kenny yesterday delivering an unmistakable rebuke to Leo Varadkar, the man he appointed to get a grip on the department.
Kenny’s ticking off had two elements. He firstly told Varadkar, as well as the rest of his Cabinet, to keep their budget negotiations behind closed doors, but his second point stung harder, telling the Minister for Health he wanted to hear what can be done, and when, and not how it can’t.
Documents
The Taoiseach’s statement follows the release of briefing documents supplied by senior officials to Varadkar, which undoubtedly informed the new Minister’s thinking.
The documents described Dr James Reilly’s health service reform plans as “unworkable”, leading to Opposition claims that the Coalition’s health reforms are “in tatters”.
When appointed to the post in July, Varadkar said he needed to read into the brief before making any calls on the big initiatives pursued by Reilly, such as universal health insurance (UHI).
He evidently made up his mind very quickly: UHI was shelved, free GP care for the under-sixes by the end of the year, as promised by the Coalition, is no longer a certainty, and neither is the abolition of the HSE by Christmas, another aim of Reilly’s.
Perhaps Varadkar felt his time in the department might be short and wanted to identify a number of policies that could realistically be achieved.
The general election is scheduled for spring 2016, but the Opposition is ready for something sooner.
Going to the polls
It expects the Government to cut not long after the budget in October 2015, meaning we could be going to the polls in just over year.
That view isn't entirely unfashionable in some Fine Gael circles either. The advantage of incumbency is that you can call it when you want; it is up to the Opposition to react. Ministers are all too aware of this, and know they have as little as a year to make an impact in their departments.
Kenny knew what he was getting when he put Varadkar, a politician with a reputation for straight-talking, in health, and it wasn’t a quiet time.
