Only 170 extra hospital beds will be in the public health system by the end of this month, the Minister for Health and Children, Mr Martin, has told a nursing conference in Co Limerick.
The rest will be introduced "on a phased basis" by the end of the year. He said the slow rate at which beds were coming on stream was not unexpected and that a reference in his script to the balance being phased in "over the next year" was a mistake.
Mr Martin had been addressing SIPTU's annual nursing conference in Raheen yesterday. The union has 10,000 general and psychiatric nurses. His speech was received coolly but 300 delegates gave him a standing ovation after he stayed to answer questions.
Later the union's general secretary, Mr John McDonnell, said the health service would not be in its present crisis if the Taoiseach, Mr Ahern, "had pursued health service reform with as much enthusiasm and energy as he has expended on his pet project, Campus Stadium Ireland - which, incidentally, wasn't even mentioned in the Programme for Government five years ago".
Mr McDonnell said that in addition to bed shortages, the health services were "1,000 nurses down" on current staffing requirements, one-third of the 26,000 people on public waiting lists had been there for over the year and the Progressive Democrats' proposals to treat public patients in private hospitals would probably mean "privatising the health service even further".
Despite Mr Martin's efforts, "problems are multiplying rather than being resolved," Mr McDonnell said. There had been a lot of "hand-wringing" about the service, "plenty of unreal promises and a lot of incredible waffle, but very little debate grounded in the realities of the health crisis".
The Programme for Government agreed by the PDs and Fianna Fáil five years ago had promised to tackle the waiting lists, but 26,000 people were still waiting for treatment and "thousands more" were "waiting for an appointment so that they can get on to the waiting list."
Even if all 709 beds were in place, "we would still be less than a quarter of the way towards the 3,000 beds which are actually needed. For the Fianna Fáil Party to claim, therefore, that waiting lists will be eliminated in 18 months is quite incredible.
"The big idea from the Government on this issue seems to be the policy fig-leaf from the PDs involving the Treatment Purchase Scheme - through which, we are told, long-suffering public patients will be treated in Germany, Britain and in private hospitals here.
"Therefore we are looking at a bizarre situation where the Government, having driven nurses and other health professionals out of this country to work abroad, is now proposing to send the patients after them."