The Minister for Health, Mr Martin, and officials from his Department are to meet the Eastern Regional Health Authority today to discuss the planned cuts in services at Dublin's main teaching hospitals.
The meeting will take place against a backdrop of serious concerns among trade unions and Opposition TDs at the announcement yesterday that the hospitals are to close 250 beds due to funding difficulties.
The ICTU's general secretary, Mr David Begg, has sought a meeting with the Taoiseach, Mr Ahern, to discuss the cuts and Labour's health spokeswoman, Ms Liz McManus, has called on Mr Martin to resign.
However, Mr Martin, played down health board complaints saying previous warnings by health boards had not been justified.
"The health service in this country is not in crisis," he said.
Speaking in Brussels after a meeting of EU health ministers, Mr Martin acknowledged that health boards throughout the country would face difficulties. "Things are tighter this year. We acknowledged this at the outset," he said.
Mr Martin dismissed, Ms McManus's call for his resignation. He said the Dublin teaching hospitals had seen significant overruns in their expenditure during 2001 and 2002.
"Of course I take responsibility for the health service but we have devolved responsibility to the health boards," he said.
The Minister suggested that it would be unfair if health boards outside Dublin were to bear the burden of excessive expenditure by Dublin hospitals.
"We have to deal with it even-handedly and on an equitable basis throughout the country," he said.
Mr Martin said he would listen to what the Regional Health Authority had to say but he ruled out making more funds available.
The Irish Nurses' Organisation President, Ms Claire Spillane, said the cuts would hurt the old, the sick and the handicapped as they did in the late 1980s.
She added that nurses were tired of being told there must be a greater return for the increased investment of recent years in the health service. "Our members working in the frontline have never worked harder as they care for more patients attending for treatment every year," she said.
The cuts and reductions in service levels were, she said, contrary to the new social programme and social partnership in general.
SIPTU Dublin Health Services Branch Secretary, Mr Paul Bell, demanded an immediate meeting with Mr Martin.
He called on the Minister to disband the ERHA over what he alleged was its mishandling of the hospital services plan.
Fine Gael's health spokeswoman, Ms Olivia Mitchell, said closing wards was the least efficient way of saving money. "Apart from the human misery the cutbacks are causing, this is financial mismanagement on a monumental scale.
"The Taoiseach must now step in and clarify if this is how he envisages the health service should be run and funded," she said.
Sinn Féin Health spokesperson, Mr Caoimhghín Ó Caoláin, said the cutbacks came exactly a year after Fianna Fáil lied to the electorate in the run-up to the general election, promising the end of hospital waiting lists within two years.