Consultants in the Mater Hospital in Dublin have said they will not obstruct the provision of private treatment to their public patients. However, they continue to insist they will not do the private procedures themselves.
The move frees the National Treatment Purchase Fund to pay for treatment for patients who have been on the Mater's waiting list for more than a year.
The Mater consultants continue to argue, however, that the money would be better spent in treating public patients in public hospitals.
Their views have been rejected by the Minister for Health and Children. Mr Martin contends that the Mater and other public hospitals currently do not have the capacity to treat the extra patients.
The fund treated its first patient last week. The patient had waited four years for a gall bladder procedure.
Patients who have waiting for treatment for a year or more (six months in the case of children) will be identified by health boards.
The National Treatment Purchase Fund will then arrange for some of these patients to be treated in private hospitals with spare capacity.
A fund spokeswoman said that, in general, the consultant who treats the patient in the private hospital will not be the patient's public consultant.
As the work of the fund gets under way, about 100 people will be treated in Dublin private hospitals in the next few weeks. The fund will then buy additional private capacity in hospitals outside Dublin. By the end of this month it will be sending patients to Northern Ireland and in August/September it will be sending patients to be treated in Britain.
In all, about 9,000 adults and 2,000 children could potentially qualify for private treatment paid for by the fund.
The Mater consultants, however, believe the principle on which the fund operates is wrong. According to Mr Donal Duffy, deputy secretary general of the Irish Hospital Consultants' Association, they believe the Government would get better value for money by having patients treated in public hospitals than it would get by paying the full cost of treating them in a private hospital.
The consultants in the Mater are "all of one mind" in the issue, he said.
The Mater has 3,600 people on its waiting list. National figures suggest about 1,200 of these have been waiting for inpatient treatment for a year or more.
The consultants in the Mater, he said, have decided that "they personally will not take their public patients down to the Mater Private and treat them there". However, he said, "They have no difficulty referring them to other consultants and other institutions."
"What is so wrong with purchasing procedures with spare capacity in private hospitals?" the Minister said in an interview on RTE Radio One's Morning Ireland yesterday.
"The Mater will come to me and say, 'Minister we don't have the capacity to do what you want us to do.' "
"The largest single capital investment project in the history of the State in Health is going into the Mater Hospital," he added.
No public patient will wait more than three months for in-patient treatment by the end of 2004, Mr Martin has said.
During the election campaign, Mr Martin said waiting lists would be eliminated within two years. In his most recent statement, Mr Martin has reverted to an earlier promise that nobody will wait more than three months for treatment in 2½ years' time.