BUPA, the private health insurer, is proposing to build a private hospital in the mid-west on health board lands in association with the Bon Secours order.
The project, in the Limerick area, is being evaluated by the health board.
Bon Secours, the largest provider of private healthcare in the State, originally won the tender to build the hospital in 1998 but brought BUPA on board as a joint partner.
BUPA runs 36 hospitals in Britain and is a partner in the Blackrock Clinic, Dublin.
The insurer is expected to pay half the estimated £30 million cost of the 75-bed hospital. It would be called St Mary's and would result in an additional 250 jobs.
The 350-bed Mid-Western Regional Hospital has 350 beds and employs 1,400 people.
The only other private facility in the Limerick area is Barrington's Hospital, the only day-care diagnostic and surgical hospital in the State. It does up to 4,000 operations a year with 100 staff.
Mr Michael Minch, chief executive of the Bon Secours Health System, said the proposed hospital would have state-of-the-art medical, surgical and diagnostic services. Currently, private patients from the region travel to hospitals in Dublin and Kilkenny.
Mr John O'Brien, assistant chief executive of the health board, said the original assessment panel was being reconvened to assess the new proposal.
He said there was a 40 per cent penetration of private-insured admissions in the region's public health system. The project would come up for discussion at the health board meeting next month or in June.
"In general terms, the whole financial package is something we would be looking at. We will be looking at the proposed design and considering ethical issues such as the public health one."
Mr Peter Jones, BUPA's director of corporate communications, said the private sector made a valuable contribution to the delivery of healthcare overall.
"If people are taking private treatment, then clearly they are making room for other people in the public system."
The current proposal is to have 25 medical beds, 20 general surgery beds, 15 orthopaedic beds, 10 oncology beds and five intensive care beds. St Mary's would have two general operating theatres and one clean-air orthopaedic operating theatre.
However, the developers may avail of a new provision in the Finance Act for hospitals with a minimum of 100 beds to provide 20 per cent of them for public health patients in return for tax concessions.