Ministerial intervention was not a solution to the problems between the Health Service Executive (HSE) and the Irish Nurses' Organisation (INO), Minister for Finance Brian Cowen said.
He said industrial relations machinery should be utilised to find a solution to the dispute where the INO has threatened action as a response to the HSE, which is to withhold benchmarking payments to nurses.
Mr Cowen was responding to Sinn Féin's health spokesman Caoimhghín Ó Caoláin, who said the issue required intervention because of the "poisoned atmosphere" that existed, and to avoid the "debacle" facing everyone if the issue was not dealt with, particularly in relation to the crisis in A&E units.
However, Mr Cowen said it was an industrial relations issue, and problems such as in A&E would "continue to revisit the health service if we do not overhaul and reorganise the way we deliver the service in the acute hospital system".
Mr Ó Caoláin said that it was "Government's responsibility and duty to help avert a deterioration of the situation in our A&E units throughout the country and across the range of hospital services, which industrial action would undoubtedly precipitate".
The Cavan-Monaghan Tsaid the HSE could not "depend on Government as a crutch for any and every move it chooses to take".
Mr Cowen said that resources were not always the issue, and hospital management should give priority to "reducing elective admissions" to allow emergencies to be dealt with.
