New Health Minister Leo Varadkar may put his predecessor's Universal Health Insurance (UHI) plan into cold storage, but the news doesn't seem to have registered with his Department yet.

Minister Varadkar said this week that he will be concentrating on introducing free GP care for the whole population in the near future and he felt the timetable of introducing universal health insurance by 2019 is 'too ambitious', indicating that it may not be introduced until at least the end of a second Fine Gael-Labour administration, if re-elected in 2016.

However, the home page of his Department's website indicates that UHI is still the number one ambition and its main mission statement.

The website states that the Department's mission is: 'Improving the health and wellbeing of people in Ireland through a single-tier health system underpinned by universal health insurance'.

Leo says goodbye (and good riddance) to UHI