The Minister for Health stressed the importance of budget limits when he announced a new £50 million hospital for Tullamore, Co Offaly, yesterday.
The success of capital projects depends on continued budgetary discipline in current expenditure, Mr Cowen said. "We tell people to live within their day-to-day expenditure, so we can proceed with capital developments," he said.
"This is actually the way forward. "It's a more disciplined approach, it's a more planned approach, and its more structured.
"And by doing it like that, we know what our service planning is at the beginning of the year and I have the leverage to make the successful argument to [the Department of] Finance that if I get increased capital monies I can improve infrastructures, meet the increased demand on services and provide for more efficiency from the modern facilities to meet patients' requirements."
The Tullamore development - involving the replacement of an existing 220-bed hospital - is part of an overall capital programme which will see £165 million being spent next year and £205 million in 2001.
Work on the Tullamore hospital, which is the Midland Health Board regional centre for orthopaedics, ear, nose and throat and opthalmics, is expected to begin in the middle of next year at the rear of the existing building.
Construction and fitting-out will take three years and will be followed by the provision of a new health board headquarters and a health education centre at the old hospital.
The number of patients seen at the hospital, which was built in 1937, has increased enormously over the last 15 years, the Minister said.