The Minister for Health's officials will confront several health boards this week over reductions in staffing and services that have undermined the Government's election promise to introduce no cuts in health services.
Senior officials will meet Western Health Board (WHB) managers to know why it has announced 200 job cuts when the Department has maintained only 80 were needed.
They will also talk to the North Eastern Health Board (NEHB)after it told hospitals to cancel non-urgent surgery; end the use of agency nurses and stop buying equipment.
The health boards have said the changes are essential to meet budgetary targets. However, some Government sources said yesterday the boards have over-reacted to temporary financial difficulties.
The Minister, Mr Martin, yesterday suggested there could be extra taxation raised to pay for health, in the face of Opposition charges that he deceived voters during the election campaign by saying there would be no cuts in health services.
He said the Government would be looking at areas of revenue generation - including allocating tobacco taxes to the health services. Asked if there would be other extra taxation he said this was for the Minister for Finance to propose, but he [Mr Martin] would accept funding from anywhere.
Mr McCreevy, he said, had "ruled nothing in and nothing out" on new tax measures.
The NEHB confirmed yesterday that it has told hospitals to cancel non-urgent surgery, not to buy equipment, not use agency nurses and cut overtime payments to non-consultant hospital doctors.
This was because the board was running €9 million over the budget agreed at the start of the year. A board spokeswoman said much of the cutback in non-urgent or elective surgery was a seasonal cut that took place every summer, but some cuts above the norm had taken place in Navan, Drogheda and Cavan hospitals, partly due to the difficulties in Monaghan hospital which were putting pressure on elsewhere.
Mr Martin said his officials would ask the WHB to explain why 200 job cuts were needed. He had thought 85 job cuts would deal with the board's financial deficit.
He again denied there were cutbacks, saying: "A cutback is taking out a service. We haven't instructed anyone to take out any service."
He said last year health boards stated they had financial difficulties in mid-year, but had come in on target at year-end.
Fine Gael and Labour called on Mr Martin to admit he is making health and other cutbacks. Fine Gael's spokeswoman Ms Olivia Mitchell said Mr Martin was "deluding himself but not fooling the people when he chooses to dress up health cutbacks as some harmless budgetary adjustments".
Labour's spokeswoman Ms Liz McManus said the cuts revealed in the NEHB area "cannot but have an impact on services - to listen to the Minister talk today about the possibility of tax rises merely confirms the absolute dishonesty of the Fianna Fáil election campaign. It has brought politics to a new low."