A Labour Party claim that the Government's plan to co-locate private hospitals on public hospital sites would have to restart from scratch has been rejected by the Department of Health.
Labour leader Pat Rabbitte claimed that the project was in trouble because of a failure by Minister for Health Mary Harney to put certain information about it before the Oireachtas within a specific time period.
Mr Rabbitte said yesterday that, under Section 10 of the Health Act 2004, any directions the Minister gave to the Health Service Executive (HSE) had to be laid before the Houses of the Oireachtas within 21 days. However, the direction relating to construction of these private hospitals, issued in 2005 to the HSE, had not been laid before the Houses of the Oireachtas at all. He said that the legal status of the entire project was therefore in question.
"This is yet another example of the extraordinary incompetence of this Government, but it also means that the entire process to date, including the short-listing of bidders and the invitations to a number of them to tender, is now open to High Court challenge by any disappointed tenderer, or any other interested party," he said.
It appeared that the Department of Health had no choice but to start the process all over again, he said.
Mr Rabbitte added that if the Government insisted on proceeding with co-located hospitals on an uncertain legal footing no private-sector developer or investor would put money into the tendering process when the rug could be pulled from underneath their feet due to the possibility of ongoing court challenges.
The Department of Health blamed an "administrative oversight" for its failure to lay the direction before the Oireachtas, but said that this did not affect the validity of the policy direction.
It said that it regretted the error and was taking steps to rectify the situation, but it claimed that this did not render the entire process legally invalid.
"It is important to note that the Attorney General has advised the department that the failure to lay the direction within time does not affect the validity of the direction," it said.
It also said that the aim of the provision in Section 10 of the Health Act was to ensure that the Oireachtas was aware of policy directions to the HSE. "However, the approval of the Houses to a policy direction is not a requirement of the Act."
The HSE expects to sign legally-binding agreements with developers to build private hospitals on eight public hospital sites by the end of May.