The hospital co-location initiative was designed to release capacity for public patients and to deliver new public acute beds quickest and most efficiently, Minister for Health Mary Harney told the Dáil.
"The initiative was founded on the principle that all patients ordinarily resident in the State should have access to public hospitals based on medical need and that the possession of private health insurance should neither influence timeliness of access or treatment."
Ms Harney said that a diversity of providers of hospital care is commonplace in many countries and was entirely appropriate.
"We will also be capable of using the new privately-managed facilities for public patients, to supplement, not to supplant, public service provision, just as we do via the national treatment purchase fund.
"In principle, I believe all hospital capacity that meets standards and offers value for money should be capable of being used for all patients." Introducing the Health (Miscellaneous Provisions) Bill, Ms Harney said that the Government had endorsed the initiative in July 2005.
"The policy directive I then issued to the HSE required the executive to undertake a rigorous value for money assessment of co-location proposals which would take account of the value of the public site and the cost of the tax foregone.
"The HSE had to satisfy itself that proposals represented better value for money than building, commissioning and operating beds in the traditional way.
"The HSE and the National Development Finance Agency have confirmed that the tenders received for six sites provide value for money and that the projects are in a position to move to the financial close."
Ms Harney said that the Bill contained provisions which put beyond doubt the legal capacity of St James's and Beaumont hospitals to enter into co-location arrangements.
Fine Gael health spokesman Dr James Reilly said he was disappointed at the manner in which the Bill had come before the House.
"In the short time I have had to consider the Bill, I understand its main purpose is to put beyond doubt the vires of 19 bodies established under the Health (Corporate Bodies) Act 1961. If that were the pure purpose of this Bill we would not have a debate, it would go through unopposed and the Minister would have got co-operation, if the legal opinion had been made available to us and it stated that clearly.
"What I do have reason to question are the other elements of the Bill . . . It will be rushed through."
Labour spokeswoman Jan O'Sullivan said that her party objected to the Bill's inclusion of measures to facilitate development of co-located private hospitals in the grounds of public hospitals.
"The Labour Party is fundamentally opposed to this measure which seeks to take our health services further along the road of dividing public and private patients so that in the near future sick people who arrive at the hospital campus and are directed left or right - some to the spanking new facility, supported by tax breaks to its wealthy developers, others to the older public hospital."
