Minister for Health Mary Harney has said she expects the Health Service Executive (HSE) to ensure "very prudent management" of its budget of over €16 billion next year.
Ms Harney confirmed that a meeting would take place later this week between her officials, representatives of the Department of Finance officials and senior HSE management on the budgetary issue.
Ms Harney said this was to ensure that "we have in place right from January 1st appropriate budgetary controls" which would avoid the "very severe action" that occurred late this year in response to cost overruns.
Minister for Finance Brian Cowen wrote to Ms Harney last week expressing "serious concern" about the HSE's budgetary problems. However, in a statement at the weekend the Government said the two Ministers were "at one in requiring that the overrun in the HSE budget cannot be allowed to recur in 2008".
Speaking at the opening of the BreastCheck unit at University College Hospital, Galway (UCHG) yesterday, Ms Harney welcomed completion of the "national roll-out" of the service, and appealed for greater participation from women eligible for screening. "I'd love to see it move from 70 per cent up to 80 or 90 per cent," she said.
"I still meet women from time to time who have had the call and have declined to go forward for screening," she said. "Please don't ignore it, it is far too important."
Speaking later in Cork, where she opened the new BreastCheck unit there, Ms Harney denied she was under any pressure from Mr Cowen and said there was nothing unusual in the letter he had sent her last week.
"It's not a serious rap, those letters happen all the time from the finance ministry to all departments and all Ministers, there's nothing unusual."
She had appointed former secretary general of the Department of Finance, Tom Considine, to examine accounting systems within the HSE because the financial situation there was "obviously serious".