TÁNAISTE AND Fianna Fáil leader-designate Brian Cowen says he wants to cut the number of administrators in the health service to make way for more frontline staff.
Mr Cowen said this could be achieved by a voluntary redundancy programme following on from the Health Service Executive's (HSE) management and administration audit being carried out.
He said administrative staff were often the "whipping boys" in terms of the problems of the health service, but added: "There is no doubt in my mind that there will be scope for reorienting the percentage of administrative staff towards frontline staff over time.
"We have to reform the service. If resources were the only situation, we wouldn't be dealing with some of the problems we are dealing with now."
Mr Cowen was one of several politicians who spoke at the agm of Inclusion Ireland, the national association for people with an intellectual disability, in Tullamore, Co Offaly, last night.
He said he wanted to change the health system from a hospital service to a health service, and said families with intellectual disabilities often lost out because of the attention given to the acute hospital sector.
"I know there are huge problems in the acute hospital services, but the first casualty is often other parts of the service.
"We do have to try and make sure that the money that the Dáil voted [for health spending] gets to the right source. My job as Taoiseach will be to make sure that I work on that aspect with colleagues."
The chairwoman of Inclusion Ireland, Finula Garrahy, told the conference that speech-therapy facilities were "reminiscent of the bad old days of the 1980s" because of cutbacks in the HSE.
She said some speech therapists were working in fast-food restaurants in Dublin because of the embargo on recruitment.