The Minister for Health, Mary Harney, has rejected criticism of the HSE by her Cabinet colleague Eamon Ó Cuív, who this week described it as an "impossible" organisation that he could make "neither head nor tail of". She also dismissed criticism by Mary O'Rourke and other Fianna Fáil TDs and said: "That's not my view".
While accepting that "there are quite a number of people who are unhappy with the HSE", Ms Harney called for "perspective" and said an independent survey had showed that "90 per cent of people who received [ health] services were happy" with the treatment they received.
Speaking in Co Kilkenny, where she was due to address delegates at a conference of senior nurses last night, the Minister signalled that there would be no additional funding for the HSE this year. She said "every organisation has to live within its budget" and the HSE had received an "enormous" increase of 11 per cent over last year.
She said increases in health spending by the Government over the last few years were "incredible" and "every health system in the world has waiting lists". Expressing frustration at media questions about hospital waiting lists, the Minister said: "Every day of the week there's people waiting for buses but we don't talk about people waiting for buses".
Earlier, the Irish Association of Directors of Nursing and Midwifery called for "an immediate lifting of the embargo on the replacement of essential front-line staff".
Its president, Barbara Fitzgerald, director of nursing at Naas General Hospital, said "we anticipate countrywide delays and trolley waits in emergency departments, and a possible closure of beds, if essential staff are not replaced".
Ms Fitzgerald fears industrial unrest unless the budget crisis is resolved. She added that "we've already had industrial unrest by nurses earlier this year and we really can't go down that road again".
A guest speaker at the conference, Prof Desmond O'Neill, a consultant in geriatric and stroke medicine at Tallaght hospital, said Ireland should regard its ageing population as a "demographic bounty rather than a demographic time-bomb".
He said society was losing out by not harnessing the creativity and energy of older people.