Until Tallaght Hospital submits its service plan for 1999 the Minister for Health, Mr Cowen, is not in a position to comment about threatened strike action or job cuts, he told the Dail.

Mr Cowen said there had been numerous media reports about pending job cuts, with numbers as high as 200 mentioned. "It has also been said that this is because the hospital budget was `cut' by £4.8 million. This is not the case."

The service plan would provide details of staffing and how the management "proposes to manage this situation".

However, the Labour Party's new health spokeswoman, Ms Liz McManus, said that the threat of industrial action at Tallaght was "the latest and most alarming chapter in the short history of this brand-new hospital. What began as a crisis is rapidly turning into a disaster."

She added: "The prospect of all-out strike action at Tallaght Hospital beggars belief and requires a superhuman effort by all the key players, but in particular by the Minister for Health, if the hospital is to be put on a sound footing and allowed to develop as it should."

She said the hospital had been undermined by gross under funding, poor communications and management, by "government by Ministerial diktat". Demoralisation among the staff had reached a point where "no one appears to have confidence in the Minister to deal fairly and competently with the current situation."

The Minister denied this and said, "There is no question of a breakdown in my Department's relationship with either management or staff. In fact, the positive relationship will continue both on a formal and informal basis."

He said, however, that the Deloitte & Touche report on Tallaght, which he commissioned, found that staff numbers on the hospital's payroll in October last year were 139 above approved levels. This had since reduced to 109 in January.

Despite numerous requests by the Department, he added, "a realistic manpower plan was never prepared by the hospital."