The Health Service Executive (HSE) has been sharply criticised by doctors' and patients' groups for announcing a freeze on recruitment, travel and other activities.
The Irish Medical Organisation (IMO) criticised the executive for regularly failing to keep within budgets and said such mismanagement would not be tolerated in other large organisations.
"The HSE is a substantial enterprise and budgetary control must be at the basis of planning and managing its affairs. However, year on year the HSE is observed to be unable to set budgets to which it can keep," an IMO spokeswoman said.
She said that the reports of budget mismanagement were disquieting. "If any other large organisation was found not to meet its budgets or targets repeatedly over a sustained period, it would be an indication of its inability to meet planning and financial objectives, and consequences would follow for management. However, in the case of the HSE, it is tolerated and continues to impact on patient care."
Consultant oncologist Prof Niall O'Higgins said it was "with considerable dismay and concern" that he had read about the recruitment embargo. "We do need staff if we are serious about reducing mortality," he said.
The patient support group Patients Together said that it had been inundated with e-mails and phone calls from worried people yesterday after the news of the recruitment ban emerged.
"It strikes a wide element of fear in people who are thinking of the winter ahead," said Janette Byrne, spokeswoman for the group. She said that patients could not understand where the money was being spent because they were still waiting for vital services.
The group criticised State spending on spin-doctors and advisers and said people felt that their money was being spent to counteract stories about problems in the health system. "Instead of listening to us, they are spending our money trying to shut us up," Ms Byrne said.
She added that people had been willing to give Minister for Health Mary Harney a chance to improve the system, but now they were asking "how long does it take?'"
BreastCheck said that the recruitment freeze would have no effect on the roll-out of breast screening in the State. It has placed advertisements in today's newspapers reassuring women that the service will continue as normal and that the expansion plans are on schedule.
"BreastCheck's plans for expansion are absolutely going ahead later this year in the west and south of the country," a spokeswoman said. Breast screening units are to open in Cork and Galway before the end of the year and the roll-out of seven mobile units will continue into next year.
