The Agriculture Minister Simon Coveney says he would have liked the government to have done more to reform emergency departments.

Fine Gael is promising to create 200,000 jobs in the next four years, to phase out the USC and to put an extra €25 a week in the pocket of pensioners.

It is all part of their election manifesto.

The plan, launched by the Taoiseach Enda Kenny in Dublin, also promises a €4bn investment fund for jobs - as well as introducing free GP care for children under-18 by 2019.

One of those instrumental for the drafting of this manifesto is Agriculture Minister Simon Coveney, Fine Gael TD for Cork South-Central.

He spoke to Newstalk Breakfast, and covered several issues - including the coalition's shortcomings.

"I do have an issue with going into government with Fianna Fáil because I think their record is terrible, I don't think we need them back in government - and I think we have a very clear proposition for people" he said.

But asked whether he would serve in a Cabinet that included Fianna Fáil, Mr Coveney said: "I'm not going to start laying down absolutes, because I'm not in a position to do it".

On plans to abolish the Universal Social Charge (USC), Mr Coveney said: "We think that we will have the resources to be able to do away with a tax that people hate".

"This was an emergency tax that was introduced at a time of an emergency by Fianna Fáil and we have been getting rid of it for the last five years".

"That is a fundamental difference in approach between ourselves and other political parties: they want to tax more to spend more, we want to tax less to get an economy growing".

"There wasn't a lot of money saved in that"

While Mr Coveney confirmed it is the party's plan to abolish the Health Service Executive (HSE), saying: "When the HSE gets broken up into localised management units around hospital trusts and hospital care, there will obviously be a lot of work to do".

"We are, over time, going to phase out the structures that currently make up the HSE that don't work effectively as they should".

Asked whether he was proud of the government's record with people hospital trolleys, he replied: "No I'm not and I think that we would like to have done more as a government - particularly around changing, reforming and improving performance within accident and emergency departments".

And Mr Coveney also admitted: "When we closed garda stations, there wasn't a lot of money saved in that".

"The focus actually in terms of closing garda stations wasn't a significant saving, it was actually focusing gardaí actually out in communities on the beat in improved cars".

And Minister Coveney also said that "there has been some mistakes made" on Irish Water.

"Many people are angry about how Irish Water was introduced - but it was the right decision".

"We tried to do things too quickly, I think, with the benefit of hindsight - we should have brought people with us in a more effective way with better communications and so on".

But he added: "Everybody will have to pay their water bills in the future".