The Tánaiste and Minister for Health, Ms Harney, was urged yesterday to inject some "urgency and energy" into the "flagging" health reform programme.
Mr Matt Merrigan, the head of a new 35,000-strong SIPTU health division, said there was a risk of inertia setting in before reforms were implemented.
SIPTU members and others, he said, were willing to embrace changes to the health service. However, there was too long a lead-in time between announcements being made and changes actually happening.
For example, the chief executive of the new Health Service Executive, Prof Aidan Halligan, would not formally take up that role until next April.
As a result, said Mr Merrigan, people in the health service would say "we cannot do anything" because a new management team was not yet in place.
Mr Merrigan was speaking at the launch of SIPTU's national health division, which brings various branches under a single umbrella.
The new division has 35,000 members including radiographers, clerical workers, technicians, welfare officers, laboratory scientists, nurses and support and specialist staff.
Mr Merrigan said SIPTU hoped to have a good relationship with Ms Harney.
"Like the Minister, this union is not ideological about health and is concerned with developing a service which can treat all customers, independent of means."
The participation of staff in reforms was there for all to see, he added, but should not be taken for granted. "In some cases it has taken so long to introduce the reform programme that the whole logic of change has been forgotten."
He urged Ms Harney "to inject some urgency and energy into the flagging reform programme and, above all, to make it real to the public and our members who, as I have already stated, are willing to engage with it."
