Fine Gael today claimed the Government has failed to achieve almost half of its own targets for improving the health service.
Deputy leader Richard Bruton said the Department of Health has not delivered 22 of the 49 output targets it promised at the beginning of last year despite getting an extra €1.8 million in funding to do so.
Mr Bruton listed several targets - including the delivery of 800 respite care beds for older people, creating 100 extra primary-care teams, and providing 110,000 extra out-of-hours GP services - that he says the Government has failed to deliver.
He also cites pledges to deliver eight child and adolescent mental health teams and associated 40-bed capacity; the expansion of cancer treatment and cancer screening: and the delivery of 255 residential places for persons with disabilities.
“This failure by the Department of Health is a perfect illustration of the crazy method of budgeting and performance evaluation fostered by Fianna Fáil during its 11 years in government," he said.
“It drafts high-rhetoric strategies which are weak on specific targets or policy tools."
However, writing recently in The Irish Times, Liam Downey, chairman of the board of the HSE, said the 2007 annual report showed the volume of services delivered by the HSE was, in most cases, substantially above the targets set for the year in the National Service Plan, and well above the levels provided in 2006.
Mr Downey added that these increased output levels were achieved within the overall HSE financial allocation, and he rejected the view of the health service situation as one of widespread cutbacks and reductions in service.