A protest is being planned by the Association of Health Boards over councillors being dropped from health boards after the June local elections. Eithne Donnellan, Health Correspondent, reports.
The health boards are due to be abolished next January, but it emerged yesterday that the Minister for Health does not want local authorities elected in June to nominate members to serve on the boards for their final six months.
Mr Jack Bourke, a Limerick councillor and chairman of the Association of Health Boards, said: "We will not go down without a fight."
He said he was shocked at yesteday's news as his association was due to meet the Minister for Health, Mr Martin, at the end of this month and he had not expected an announcement before then.
The news came, however, when Mr Martin was questioned on the issue at a photocall prior to the first meeting of the newly established interim Health Service Executive (HSE).
The executive will be responsible under the Government's health service reform programme for the day-to-day running of the health service including its €10 billion budget.
Mr Martin did not state categorically that councillors' membership of health boards would end in June but he suggested there was no point in newly-elected councils nominating representatives to health boards for periods of just four, five or six months.
The period of their involvement would have to be so short given that the health boards themselves are due to be abolished in 12 months.
Mr Martin said legislation underpinning the changes would be brought forward in coming months.
"It would be my intention to bring that to the Dáil before the summer," he said.
The Minister said that he would be making a separate announcement in relation to the abolition of health boards in due course.
But he added: "You can take it that obviously with the onset of the local elections that there is a need to bring clarity to the situation post the local elections in terms of representation on health boards and so on ... and that issue has to be dealt with before the summer.
"Broad heads are with the Government already on that. We will be announcing the details of that shortly.
"As you know local elections are the key to appointing people to health boards in so far as councillors are appointed from the subsequent councils that are elected by the people, to health boards.
"There won't be health boards in 2005 going forward so people will need clarity as to whether or not they should be appointing people to boards for four or five or six months and the legislation will clarify that situation."
Mr Martin said he had been in talks with the Association of Health Boards on how public representatives may have a voice on the four regional structures which will replace the health boards.
Mr Bourke said the removal of councillors from the health boards was "democracy gone out the window". But he said the councillors would not lie down.
"We have our annual conference coming up in Tullamore and we will certainly protest at that.
"Whether our protest makes any difference at the end of the day is neither here nor there but we will not go down without a fight," he added.
The decision to abolish health boards and political representation on them was put forward in the Prospectus report published last year.
One of three reports to shape the Government health service reform programme, it said the presence of local representatives on health boards had caused problems, including a reluctance to accept evidence-based decisions that were locally unpopular.
Meanwhile, a project team in the Department of Health is working out boundaries for the four new regional health authorities which will replace health boards. Its work is at an advanced stage.
The new authorities will have greater professional and consumer representation.