A major protest by workers in the health service over Government cutbacks was threatened yesterday by union leaders.
Thousands of workers will take to the streets in the autumn unless services are properly funded by then, delegates to the Irish Congress of Trade Unions biennial conference in Tralee, Co Kerry, were told.
Mr Jack O'Connor, vice-president of SIPTU, said "at least one major national demonstration" should be held as part of a campaign, focused on the next budget, to secure a better health service.
His call was supported by Mr Liam Doran, general secretary of the Irish Nurses' Organisation, who said unions would put "thousands upon thousands of people on the streets" if all hospital beds and community services were not fully operational by the autumn.
They would also tell the Government that "we will hit you in the ballot box unless you fully fund the health service and make it truly world class for all of us, for our children and our children's children".
Mr O'Connor, one of several speakers to express outrage at the state of the service, said it was clear the public health system was in crisis. "Just as our prosperity masks a widening gap between rich and poor, our two-tier health service is such as to almost defy rational analysis.
"The OECD described it as 'unique'. It might be more accurately described as a bizarre, sick joke perpetrated on the most disadvantaged in our society who see wealthy patients receiving substantial subsidies from the public purse to secure faster access to treatment from profit-driven enterprises trading in health services."
Just over 18 months ago, he continued, the Minister for Health, Mr Martin, had outlined an imaginative blueprint, but it was clear this was predicated on a funding commitment which the Minister for Finance, Mr McCreevy, was "never prepared to meet".
There was now another blueprint, drawn from the Prospectus and Brennan reports, involving structural reforms which had some merit.
"But will they make an iota of difference to public access to treatment or to the two-tier nature of the health service? I don't believe they will.
"Because the really necessary change, which this Government is studiously avoiding, is the reform of deep-seated inequities and irrationalities in the present parasitical public-private partnership in health. For as long as that two-tier approach remains intact, the present chaotic, impoverished public system will continue to lurch from crisis to crisis."
Mr Doran said the alliance of health service unions should be reformed and "mobilise the community at large" to ensure the Government got the message.
"Because they're getting away with it at the moment, colleagues, they are getting away with cutbacks."
Congress general secretary Mr David Begg said the concept of "the black hole" in the health service had gained "a currency value" in public discourse.
While it was true that spending on health, at 10 per cent of GNP, now exceeded the EU average, that was against a background of under-investment since the mid-1980s.
"While states with better healthcare have invested at above average rates for decades, Ireland is grappling with the after-effects of decades of under-investment.
"Although some states, such as Canada and Denmark, consider they have waiting list problems, Ireland's are in another league."
Delegates unanimously passed an INO motion affirming that the current health system was inequitable as it "sustains a two-tiered structure where a better service is available to those who can afford to pay".
An emergency motion on plans by the Minister for Transport, Mr Brennan, to break up CIÉ and end Aer Rianta's monopoly at Dublin Airport is to be debated today.
The Taoiseach will be the keynote speaker tomorrow.
