The organisation representing the majority of hospital consultants in the State yesterday criticised the Ministers for Health and Finance for suggesting consultants were holding up talks on a new contract.
Finbarr Fitzpatrick, secretary general of the Irish Hospital Consultants Association, accused Mary Harney and Brian Cowen of "playing to the gallery" and telling "downright falsehoods" regarding the new contract talks.
Ms Harney said last week that she wanted talks with consultants on a new contract concluded this spring.
If she could not get agreement with existing consultants on the introduction of a contract which would see some consultants treat only public patients by then, she would begin recruiting new consultants under such contracts.
Mr Fitzpatrick insisted yesterday it was not hospital consultants who were dragging their feet in the case of these negotiations.
"Two meetings have passed and the Government side has failed to table any proposals whatsoever for discussion, leading to two further meetings being cancelled," he said.
"It now appears there is a conflict between the Government and the HSE on the issues of public/private medicine and that this is the reason for the failure to table any draft document in these talks," he added.
It was "arrant hypocrisy" then for two of the Government's most senior ministers "to be making populist denunciations of consultants, accusing them of not negotiating with the Government, when the real hold- up in the talks process at present arises directly from the failure of the Government side to table a draft contract document which they had promised to do long before now.
"It seems that Ministers Harney and Cowen have decided that the best way to cover up their ineptitude is to embark on yet another campaign of consultant-bashing," Mr Fitzpatrick said.