Mary Harney's first year as Minister for Health has been one of "chaos, indecision and paralysis", the Labour Party has claimed. It said the suspension of the introduction of the new health service computer system was "the latest in a series of failures".
A spokesman for Ms Harney yesterday rejected an analysis of her first year in the job published by Labour.
Labour's deputy leader and spokeswoman on health, Liz McManus, said Ms Harney was appointed on September 29th last year but had "failed to make any significant progress on virtually any of the issues she found on her desk when she went to the Department of Health".
However, a spokesman for the Tánaiste said Ms Harney had "implemented the largest structural reform of the health service in the history of the State. The Labour Party voted against it, then they wanted to postpone its implementation".
Ms McManus said Ms Harney had said in January she expected "real and measurable improvements to take place in the coming months" in relation to the crisis in A&E units.
However, the situation was now worse, she said.
Some 243 people were on trolleys last week, she said, compared to 166 patients on November 1st last year.
Ms Harney's spokesman said the Government's plan to end the A&E crisis was being implemented.
He expected, for example, that a new out-of-hours GP service would be in place in north Dublin this winter to take pressure off acute hospitals.
Ms McManus said the Primary Care Strategy, published by the Government in 2002, had been stalled, with the Minister saying there was no money to fund it. Despite €30million being set aside for 30,000 full medical cards, these had not been issued and there had been no increase in the number of medical-card holders since last January.
The Minister's spokesman said Ms Harney had brought forward funding for "innovative" new doctor-only medical cards.