The head of the Health Service Executive (HSE), Prof Brendan Drumm, has called on politicians not to turn the issue of the care of the elderly into a political football.
Prof Drumm, who addressed the Fine Gael parliamentary party meeting in Portlaoise yesterday, said the issue "demands a little bit of bravery from all politicians that they don't use it as a means of attacking one another".
He also told the meeting that one of his priorities was to get primary and community care services "up and running on a very comprehensive level".
He said it was important that "we begin to take this huge emphasis we have on hospital services and move it to the appropriate level, which is a different level of care".
Prof Drumm said he also stressed "the importance of this country developing a policy for the care of the elderly, that it doesn't become a political football".
"Talking about patients 'bedblocking' is to my mind a gross insult to elderly people who have been left inappropriately in hospital beds because we have no policy as to how to move them on in the system into a much more appropriate level of care in long-term care facilities or supporting them in the home environment."
Prof Drumm reiterated his belief that the problem should be addressed by improving access to general practitioners and primary care services, which he said would reduce pressure on overcrowded A&E units. The approach has been criticised by nursing organisations and some A&E consultants as failing to address the fundamental issue of lack of resources in a speedy manner.
"I have to look at the service in a global perspective and you know, people who work in A&E I'm sure have a very specific focus on the health service," he said. "My focus has to be much wider than that." He said GPs needed to be brought into the "front line" and were "hugely important" in helping to address the A&E crisis.
"I'm not getting into battles with anybody. All I'm telling you is on the north side of Dublin, for instance, where I think that comment came from, we have at the moment a situation where we have up to 200 people at night who need contact with general practice services. These are the most skilled doctors in our system, our general practitioners."
He also defended his decision to address a political meeting, saying he was "absolutely available to meetings of politicians who are involved in restructuring the health service".
He said Minister for Health Mary Harney was fully supportive of this.
"People want the health service to become as apolitical as possible. People want to be seen to engage across political boundaries in terms of actually achieving the best possible service."
Fine Gael's health spokesman, Dr Liam Twomey, said the party was fully supportive of Prof Drumm's emphasis on primary care services.
However, he described Prof Drumm's call to keep politics out of the issue of care for the elderly as being "a bit unrealistic". He said the Government had yet to publish a detailed plan for elderly care. How such care would be paid for was definitely "a political issue", he added.
New initiatives are likely to be introduced in this year's Budget to assist families care for elderly relatives in their own homes, Minister for Health Mary Harney has signalled. She said yesterday she and her Cabinet colleague, Minister for Social and Family Affairs Séamus Brennan, would bring proposals to Cabinet before the Budget "in relation to care of the elderly".
She also said a working group set up in January by herself and Mr Brennan to look at ways of caring for the elderly would report back within the next month. "Care of elderly is a big priority of mine. It's one of the major issues feeding into some of the pressure points in the hospital system for example," she said.
She was speaking to reporters before reopening a ward at the Coombe Women's Hospital in Dublin following its refurbishment.