A large majority of the country's public hospitals last year treated more private patients than officially allowed under Government rules, The Irish Times has learned.
In some public hospitals nearly 50 per cent of those discharged last year were fee-paying patients.
Current Department of Health regulations maintain that 80 per cent of those treated in public hospitals should be public patients. Around 20 per cent of beds, on average, are designed for fee-paying patients.
The new figures were released by Minister for Health Mary Harney in answer to a parliamentary question set down by Progressive Democrat backbencher Mae Sexton.
The figures reveal that in the St Nessan's Regional Orthopaedic Hospital in Croom, Co Limerick, 49 per cent of those discharged last year were private patients.
The figure at St John's Hospital in Limerick city was 48 per cent.
In the Regional Hospital in Limerick city, private patients accounted for 42 per cent of those discharged last year while at Lourdes Orthopaedic Hospital at Kilcreene in Kilkenny the figure was 40 per cent.
In the main Dublin hospitals, 35 per cent of those discharged from Tallaght hospital were private patients while in Beaumont hospital the figure was 31 per cent.
At the National Maternity Hospital, Holles Street, 42 per cent of discharges were private while at the Coombe Women's Hospital the figure was 38 per cent.
In Cork the number of private in-patients treated was highest at the South Infirmary/Victoria Hospital and at St Mary's Orthopaedic Hospital where the figure was 35 per cent.
The release of the new figures comes as the Department of Health is believed to be considering radical proposals which would see private patients moved from public hospitals to new private facilities to be developed on the campuses of public hospitals.
Ms Harney has recently received a consultancy report on a new strategy for the development of a network of such facilities. There are currently over 2,000 private beds in public hospitals.
Ms Sexton, who secured the new figures, said last night that they clearly demonstrated that there was far too much private activity in public hospitals.
"In 48 out of the 56 public hospitals there was much more private activity than ever envisaged appropriate.
"These private in-patient discharges include admission through Accident and Emergency and if you were to take the purely private elective admissions, you can expect that the proportion of private activity would be even higher", she said.
Ms Sexton said she believed that the public/private mix in hospitals was now "unmanageable" and was not fair to public patients. "Part of the problem that must be sorted out is that hospitals get paid overnight charges by insurance companies only for private patients in designated private beds.
"When private patients are treated in public beds, the hospital receives no payments but consultants earn fees. This is a crazy situation and part of the completely irrational mix that needs to be sorted", Ms Sexton said.
