Voluntary Health Insurance controls too much of the health insurance market for it to be privatised as a single company, the Tánaiste, Ms Harney, has said.

The latest cautious commentary by a minister is further evidence that the Government has put plans to sell off public companies on the long finger.

Speaking in Dublin at the launch of the logo for Ireland's EU presidency, the Tánaiste and Progressive Democrats' leader said: "I would be concerned that in a private situation they would have a very dominant position and that would not be very good for competition. I would prefer to see more competition in health insurance before we would speculate on how we might privatise a company like the VHI.

"There have been issues on how you might privatise the VHI. Would you privatise it in its entirety as a single entity, or would you look at the possibility of disposing of pieces of it to different companies?

"I think there is an open mind in relation to that. But, above all else, anything we do on privatisation has to be done with a view to increasing competition," she said.

During the last Fianna Fáil/ Progressive Democrats government, she said Aer Rianta management had proposed selling off 60 per cent of the airports authority. "Clearly we could not accept that because that transferred a public utility to private ownership and we would not have had any competition. We took a very strong view against it, because we felt it would be very bad for competition," she said.

The Tánaiste yesterday continued to favour sell-offs "on a case-by-case basis" and to spend the money raised "for things we need today, like roads, public transport, broadband and health and education facilities".