The Progressive Democrats and Labour have accused each other of pursuing ideological policies that will undermine the quality of the health service available to public patients in Irish hospitals.
A spokesman for the Minister for Health, Mary Harney, said last night that an analysis of Labour's approach to the private health sector would inevitably result in public patients having to endure massive health cuts and much longer waiting times for operations.
Earlier the Labour leader, Pat Rabbitte, called on Ms Harney not to sign contracts for private clinics on public land before the general election, as the Government has no mandate for such a policy.
Ms Harney's spokesman maintained that Labour's open hostility to private- sector providers of health services would do serious damage to the quality of health care available to public patients.
"If Labour ever get to implement this policy, it means one thing only for public patients, and only for public patients: massive health cuts and much longer waiting times for operations, nursing care, MRI scans and hospital beds. Private patients will still be able to get all these treatments," said the spokesman.
He maintained that Labour policy would result in a series of cuts, including:
• 17,000 patients a year being denied treatment for cataracts, hips, veins and cardiology under the National Treatment Purchase Fund (NTPF).
• The withdrawal of more than 700 private nursing home beds being provided for public patients this year.
• The withdrawal of 2,000 MRI scans for public patients paid by the NTPF.
• The end of private sector centres for kidney dialysis in south Dublin and Kilkenny.
• Up to 1,000 public beds in 10 public hospitals being withdrawn from public patients and reserved for private fee-earning use by hospital consultants.
Earlier, during a visit to the Cork South Central constituency, Mr Rabbitte reiterated his party's total opposition to the policy of building private hospitals on public land and said the Government had campaigned for an entirely different approach to health at the last election.
"Let us not have for-profit medicine by the backdoor, with contracts being signed in the dying days of a Government. Let us not have the Irish people lumbered with bad health policy, just because Mary Harney is anxious to commit this folly and time is running out on the Government," he said.
Mr Rabbitte said that these super- private clinics did not come free as they were being built with expensive tax breaks and the land being used could not be replaced.
"Even if the investors pay market rates for the land, we are talking about land on the sites of public and voluntary hospitals. Once handed over to the private sector, that land cannot be replaced. It is land that should be used for other purposes, such as building community nursing beds, or acute hospital beds for the existing hospital," he said.
Mr Rabbitte added that there was a fundamental issue of values at stake. "Mary Harney simply doesn't get it. Health is a community service, not a market commodity. Of course we have private medicine in Ireland, but it is usually provided by not-for-profit foundations. Whereas for-profit medicine has been a small part of the Irish health system up to now, Mary Harney wants to engineer a major shift towards for-profit medicine."
He said the plan is the act of a desperate Minister, and a desperate Government which had utterly failed to tackle the crisis in the health service. "Once contracts are signed, it will be very difficult to unpick this scheme. I challenge Minister Harney. You do not have a mandate to turn Irish medicine into a profit-making business. You must not sign backdoor contracts with investors for these super-private clinics," said Mr Rabbitte.