The Irish Medical Organisation has opposed the Progressive Democrats' proposal to offer private healthcare to all public patients left on waiting lists for more than three months.
The IMO vice-president, Dr Kate Ganter, said: "This is not a realistic solution to a real problem. We don't believe that the PDs have done their homework on this initiative and have been ill-advised."
Private hospitals here do not have the beds or manpower to offer treatments to public patients, she said, following a meeting of the IMO's consultants' committee.
Cutbacks in the 1980s mean that Ireland has the lowest number of in-patient beds in the European Union.
"Ireland had 9.7 beds per 1,000 people in 1980 and only 3.7 in 1998," said Dr Ganter.
Consultants have dramatically increased the numbers of patients treated over the last five years, despite a minimal rise in their numbers, she claimed.
Meanwhile, Department of Health officials are understood to oppose a key element of the Progressive Democrats' proposal - which would offer consultants a fee for every extra patient treated privately.
Earlier this week, the Minister for Health, Mr Martin, offered a lukewarm response to the PD proposal.
"I have said that we will give it careful consideration," he declared.
If accepted, the plan would use £50 million to cut the 26,000-strong waiting list numbers by using excess capacity in private hospitals here, or those in the United Kingdom and continental Europe.
But the Department of Health is known not to favour paying Irish consultants on a "fee per item" basis - even though it has no philosophical objections to sending patients abroad for care not available here. The Progressive Democrats, meanwhile, have dropped their long-held support for a universal health insurance system - which would offer VHI-style cover to everyone in the State.
Until July, the PDs, along with Fine Gael and Labour, believed universal insurance offered the best chance of improving standards and competition within the health services.
But support ebbed away during discussions between the Tβnaiste and Progressive Democrat leader, Ms Harney, members of the parliamentary party, Cllr Tim O'Malley and senior advisers.
Such a scheme would do little to improve competition in the medical system and would divert effort from improving overall services at a critical time, party figures now argue.
The Minister for Health was told in early July that the Progressive Democrats were preparing their own policy ideas.
The Tβnaiste sits on the Cabinet's health strategy sub-committee, but this has not met since then.
Fine Gael's silence about the Progressive Democrats' package is continuing to raise interest.
"We did not want to give them the oxygen of publicity," argued a Fine Gael spokesperson.
The Irish Hospitals Consultants' Association (IHCA) has cast doubt on the ability of the package to work.
The IHCA's secretary-general, Mr Finbarr Fitzpatrick, is also the FG director of elections.
Cllr O'Malley rejected suggestions that the PDs were blaming consultants.
"Our proposal is the only workable plan which will end the scandal of long waiting lists," he said.
The Progressive Democrats rejected the IHCA's claim that Irish hospitals overuse their beds. "The figures they quote are for public hospitals only. They don't have private hospitals' figures," one source said.
