The Minister for Health, Mr Martin, has accused a doctors' association of mounting a "partisan" campaign about deficiencies in the health service.
The Irish College of General Practitioners (ICGP) campaign is aimed at encouraging voters to complain about the state of the health service when election canvassers call to their doors.
The ICGP says patients are being put at risk by deficiencies in the service.
Last night, Mr Martin said: "I do not mind the college raising the issue, but I feel they have done so in a partisan manner which lacks balance."
The group has issued its members with posters to be displayed in doctors' waiting rooms with the words: "Your General Practice service is becoming dangerously stretched".
"When you encounter political representatives, the ICGP believes that it is critical for them to understand that healthcare is important to you. If this is not communicated effectively, it is unlikely the current situation will improve", the poster states.
The election message from the ICGP, which represents family doctors in the Republic, lists a series of "facts that you should know".
These include:
Many GPs are closing their practice lists and cannot accept new patients due to workload pressure
It is likely that your healthboard has difficulty recruiting GPs to fill vacant medical card lists
Proper preventative services, such as screening to reduce death from heart disease and cancer, are still not available to medical card patients
Following hospital referral, the waiting lists for outpatient clinic appointments remain unacceptably long and put patients' health at risk.
The poster refers to the Government's decision to extend the medical card scheme to the over-70s, irrespective of income, and its failure to extend it to those on marginal incomes.
The doctors' body has also issued a separate poster to its members in which it invites doctors to list the current waiting times for various investigations and specialist appointments in their practice area.
Asked why it had undertaken this campaign, the chairman of the communications committee of the ICGP, Dr Brendan O'Shea, said: "Sorting out the problems in the GMS scheme could have been achieved relatively inexpensively over the last five years - we are disappointed that it was not done."
He said that the college was concerned that GPs were working under excessive pressure in an under-resourced and over-administered system which significantly fails to address patients' needs.
Last night, Mr Martin said there had been many advances in primary care during the last five years, and said that for Dr O'Shea to suggest that the GMS [General Medical Scheme] could have been sorted out inexpensively was completely naive.
"I know and anyone who has been involved in negotiations knows that the GMS has received significant funding and will continue to do so," the Minister said.
Mr Martin reiterated his belief that "the health strategy offers a good way forward for general practice".