The Government proposals to radically reform the health service will not improve patient care, Opposition parties said today.
Fine Gael claimed the illusion of activity presented by the Minister for Health will do nothing to address the real crisis in the health service. Health spokesperson Ms Olivia Mitchell said the proposals are simply changes to a faulty system when what is needed is a real system change.
She said: "Changing administrative structure in the health service may produce the illusion of savings but eventually all of the inefficiences inherent in a state-provided service[...]will re-emerge."
Ms Mitchell also said that the proposals may in fact make things worse if these reforms are to be the priority for the next 18 months as claimed by the Secretary General. She said all the expertise and concern will be focussed on the abolition of the Health Boards while the health service itself is falling apart.
The Labour Party's spokesperson on Health, Ms Liz McManus, said the measures announced would not alleviate the situation at the Mater Hospital which has been forced to make contingency plans to treat accident and emergency patients in a car park, or the problems facing Our Lady's Hospital for Sick Children in Crumlin.
The Labour Party said the "accountant driven" health reform reports will do nothing to deal with the crisis facing hospitals in the State.
Ms McManus claimed the public was suffering from "report fatigue" and what they really wanted was decisions on practical measures to ensure they would receive treatment without spending months or even years on waiting lists.
She said Labour supported in principle a reduction in the number of health boards, but was opposed to any measures which made community health services more remote from the people they are intended to serve.
Sinn Fein's health spokesman Mr Caoimhghín Ó Caoláin described the proposals a "bureaucratic change" and not the fundamental reform promised. He said the plan could not succeed in delivering improvements for patients unless the two-tier public-private system was ended.
"While new bureaucratic structures are being set up, public patients will continue to suffer and die on waiting lists, hospital beds will remain closed and 200,000 people will be left without the medical card cover promised by the Government before the last general election."
Mr Ó Caoláin described the proposed National Health Executive as an exercise in political expediency.