The Health Service Executive is to temporarily shelve its faulty payroll system tomorrow until it is re-examined, the Minister for Health Mary Harney said tonight.
HSE chiefs gathering for a board meeting in the morning will decide to suspend the roll-out of the controversial P-PARS technology until its viability is assessed.
Ms Harney said today: "I understand the HSE will decide tomorrow to suspend the roll-out of the P-PARS, and I think that's very sensible.
"We need a proper evaluation of whether is the appropriate system for the health service."
Speaking to reporters in Dublin, Ms Harney said: "If this system is not appropriate, it cannot continue. We have to stop it and admit it was an error.
"If it is appropriate it should be rolled out."
Opposition TDs have slammed the system which has so far cost €116 million, including up to €70 million on external consultants.
Last year alone Deloitte and Touche received €13.5 million in consultancy fees for work on P-PARS.
"Consultants should only be used if there is no in-house expertise," Ms Harney said.
The Dáil heard this morning that some 43 per cent of nurses in the midlands were overpaid by the health service's controversial new payroll system.
But Taoiseach Bertie Ahern insisted the system should be implemented and that 40,000 were on the system "and the system is working".
According to a confidential memo revealed to the House by Fine Gael leader Enda Kenny, as well as the mistakes revealed by the survey of midlands area nurses, one nurse in Cork received €3,000 extra in her monthly pay packet and 20 nurses in Wexford were overpaid by the computerised payroll system, PPARs.
Earlier this year it was revealed that in one instance an employee had been paid €1 million by mistake.
Mr Kenny also said that "a major social bash down in Sligo" last Christmas "costing in excess of €40,000" was held to celebrate the ongoing progress of this PPARs scheme.
"This system which you were supposed to oversee, and which the people in the Department of Health were supposed to oversee, is patently not working."
"I think the Taoiseach should leave down his shovel at this stage," Mr Kenny urged Mr Ahern who said the system should not be abandoned altogether.
Mr Ahern said that in implementing the project a number of major IT issues had to be addressed. "Accurate recording of over 25 different staff rosters, employment conditions for staff, which are entirely dependant on the health board. As a result there were wide variations of attendance hours, annual leave and attendances.
"A decision was taken to incorporate all these variations into the new system and that dramatically increased the complexity of the manual intervention.
"Of course looking at it now it would have been far better if they just stuck to trying to get the payroll system right but they didn't do that.
But Mr Ahern added: "They should continue to develop the system so that the new Health Service Executive, having moved from an organisation of 11 disparate health boards, now has a proper system.
"Yes they haven't done it very well to date but they should continue to try and get it right and use money correctly. That's the right thing to do."
Labour leader Pat Rabbitte described the system as "a monumental cock-up" and claimed that the €70 million spent on external consultants since 1998 should be recouped by the Government.
"At the end of the day this is the money being coughed up by people who are struggling to go to work every day and juggle the responsibilities of family and career to pay their taxes," Mr Rabbitte said.
Addressing Mr Ahern, he added: "Why can you grow so far removed from people who get up at 6.30am in the morning to commute long distances to work to pay their taxes and you stand over your Government wasting their money in this fashion?
"This is one of the biggest cock-ups, a monumental cock-up. A Niagara of waste of taxpayers' money.
"The computer system is not working in the Department of Health and neither is the minister."
Additional reporting PA