Private hospitals:A political row has broken out between the Labour Party and Minister for Health Mary Harney over a Labour advertisement in yesterday's Irish Times.
The advert was in the form of a notice directed at "all contractors and consortia tendering for super private hospitals co-located with existing public hospitals".
The advert drew attention to the fact that it was Labour policy "not to have such hospitals as part of healthcare provision in Ireland".
According to the advertisement, Labour in government "will immediately terminate all progress on such projects except where contractual obligations otherwise oblige".
In a statement criticising the Labour move, Ms Harney dismissed the advertisement as "irrelevant" and a "stunt".
"There was no need for the Labour Party to waste money on stunts like small ads in the newspapers today.
It is already clear that the Labour Party would put a 'Keep Out' sign over Ireland for private investment in health to complement public investment."
The Minister added: "It is irrelevant for the Labour Party to focus on contracts for the new hospitals.
"They are intent on destroying new investment in hospitals in Ireland, whether co-located with public hospitals or not, by removing the capital allowances for investment in hospitals."
Ms Harney continued: "The HSE is managing its public procurement timetable without electoral considerations. It is possible that winning bidders will be identified before June 14th, with contracts to be signed after the legally-required two week 'cooling off period'.
"It is our understanding that the award of winning bids itself creates a certain level of legal obligation. To cancel projects at that stage would be an act of irresponsibility."
At a Labour news conference, party health spokeswoman Liz McManus was asked what message potential tenderers should take from the advertisement.
"That they might as well forget about it," she replied.
Ms McManus told The Irish Timesafterwards: "If there are contractual obligations we will meet them, but there aren't any that we are aware of anyway."
Attacking the Government's approach, she said: "We have had a muddle, we have had a shift of direction, we have had the ideological bias of Mary Harney leading us down the US model of private clinics on public lands."
However, she indicated there could still be a role for the private sector.
"We have never said that there is no role in the health service for the private sector, but this idea that you hand over public lands to super, private clinics and then pretend that they are like-with-like in terms of providing public beds is nonsense and we will put an end to it."
She said Labour had at least 10 locations in mind where extra beds would be provided to meet the party's target of 2,300 additional acute in-patient beds.
"This is not something which it isn't possible for a rich country to provide. Other European countries take for granted that they will have sufficient numbers of beds."
