Minister for Health Mary Harney defended the setting up of the HSE. She said it had been the subject of a lot of attacks, from the Opposition and Government sides.
"All of the reports which pre-empted health reform, including the Brennan commission prospectus, said that our system was too fragmented," she added.
Ms Harney was speaking during the resumed debate on a Fine Gael Private Members' motion critical of the Government's performance on health. The reality, she said, was that many public hospitals were "a hive of private enterprise".
There was a "hullabaloo" when the previous government sought to convert private beds, funded by the taxpayer, to public beds with access for all patients. She said if best practice for in-hospital stays could be introduced for basic procedures, hospitals' performance would be improved.
"We have to reform our hospital and acute services along the lines of best practice in other European countries," she said
Michael D Higgins (Labour, Galway West) said there should be more accountability and it would be useful to examine how its budget overrun happened. "I know certain areas where the cap on the public service side was instituted, but those in charge could tell you clearly that they were able to go outside of budget and into overspend on privatised services," he said.
Mary O'Rourke (FF, Longford-Westmeath) agreed public expenditure must be kept within limits. "But I question why it got so far and nobody seemed to cop on," she added.
