The board of the Health Service Executive (HSE) today formally approved six tenders to build private health facilities in the grounds of public hospitals.
In a statement the HSE named six hospital sites that will have the co-located facilities.
The Beacon Medical Group will build co-located services in MWRH Limerick, Cork University Hospital and Dublin's Beaumont Hospital.
Mount Carmel Medical won the contract at Sligo General, while the Bon Secours Consortium was successful in bidding for the Waterford Regional Hospital contract. Synchrony/Capio Health will build the co-located unit in Dublin's St James' Hospital.
The controversial co-location plan was announced by the Government in 2005 as a means of increasing acute hospital bed numbers by 1,000.
According to Minister for Health Mary Harney, the new private facilities built alongside public hospitals will free up beds in the public system that are currently ring-fenced for paying private patients.
The HSE said the project has been subjected to a National Development Finance Agency and Department of Health & Children-approved public sector 'benchmark' to ensure value for money and the protection of the public interest.
"The commercial value of each site has been determined by independent assessors," the HSE said.
According to the HSE, the land on which the new private hospitals will be built will be on a lease from the State at full market value. No land will be sold to the successful bidders.
"This efficient utilisation of public resources means that the State will receive an income for land that is not being used and for which no alternative public development has been planned. The location of sites in each hospital has been identified in the majority of cases as part of individual Hospital's Development Control Plans (DCP)," the HSE said.
The public hospital will also receive a percentage of any profits from the co-located private facility as well as a share of profits from other "non-core" activities such as car parking and retail facilities.
The National Hospitals Office, the HSE said, monitor all activity of the private hospitals as it would its public hospitals and they will be subject to the same monitoring and reporting standards.
Fintan Hourihan, industrial relations director at the Irish Medical Organisation, today said the case for co-location had not been proved and that his organisation would continue to argue against it. Mr Hourihan was speaking to a motion at the Irish Congress of Trade Unions (Ictu) biennial conference in Bundoran, Co Donegal.
"We welcome the recognition that more hospital beds need to be provided; we do not advocate co-location as the means to deliver this extra capacity," Mr Hourihan said.
"The case for co-location has not been proven and in our view it is no coincidence that there was never a white paper or green paper produced on this most radical departure from the existing hybrid model of care in the history of the state. Personally, I believe that such a case will never be proven."
Mr Hourihan added: "We will continue to work with Congress in arguing the case against the proposed model. Ultimately, we recognise it is a key feature of the Programme for Government."
Speaking at a protest outside the HSE meeting today, Sinn Féin health spokesman Caoimhghín Ó Caoláin claimed the co-location "represents the privatisation" of Ireland's health services.
"The co-location plan will reinforce the two-tier public-private system. It will place private for-profit and public service hospitals side by side with the private health business claiming the more lucrative 'customers'", he said. "It will make it more difficult to introduce essential reforms such a single hospital waiting list for all patients."