The first of a network of community-based medical centres, set up in partnership with general practitioners, has been opened in Dublin by the Minister for Health.
The primary-care units will provide treatment for many patients who have previously gone to hospitals, thus easing pressure on casualty departments in particular.
Mr Cowen opened two of the centres in Tallaght yesterday at Killinarden and Brookfield. Each is staffed by GP teams backed-up by public health nurses and child developmental and social work services.
They were built by the Eastern Health Board at a total cost of £890,000, to which local doctors contributed £125,000.
They are based on a plan worked out between the EHB, the Department of Health and other health-care providers (known as the Roundwood agreement). This aims to provide new modern, state-of-the-art, primary-care units in Cos Dublin, Kildare and Wicklow.
Five GPs are practising at the Brookfield centre, with three at the Killinarden centre.
Mr Cowen said: "These facilities mark an innovative approach to the provision of primary health-care facilities which take account of local needs and provide a range of services as close to the consumer as possible."
The "vastly improved" services serving Tallaght would be complemented by the opening of Tallaght Hospital within three weeks.
The EHB chairwoman, Ms Roisin Shortall TD (Lab), said the centres would become flagship developments for the board.
"The partnership concept they enshrine will become models for similar primary-care initiatives in the future."
The board was benefiting from the upsurge in property prices and channelling monies back into services' funds to help those who were benefiting least from the current boom.
"We will continue to contribute to new capital projects required in the region by maximising our income from the disposal of land and property that is surplus to our requirements.
"We are actively preparing a development plan for some of our major landbanks," Ms Shortall added.
