The Minister for Health, Mr Cowen, is refusing to sanction the allocation of any extra funding to meet the multi-million overrun in day-to-day spending at the new Tallaght Hospital.
Mr Cowen is to meet the hospital's board of management early next week following their examination of the Deloitte and Touche consultants' report revealing an overrun of £13.3 million and a potential £4.3 million overrun of capital expenditure.
The 211-page report led to heated exchanges in the Dail yesterday as the Minister rejected Fine Gael claims that he was guilty of a breach of trust with the hospital management and was refusing to publish the findings on the grounds that they contained criticisms of his Department.
Confirming that the projected net revenue deficit for 1998 was £8.5 million - after allowing for additional funding for increased pensions costs, special pay awards, PRSI and superannuation - Mr Cowen said he was adopting the same policy with this hospital as he had taken through the year with all others.
Meanwhile, "each element of the capital expenditure is currently being reviewed to establish if it was of a critical nature and absolutely essential to the opening of the hospital".
"I will consider whether any further capital funding is appropriate when I receive this assessment before Christmas," he added. Despite Opposition demands that he publish the report, the Minister said the issue "does not arise at this point". To do so would not be helpful to resolving the problems.
Fine Gael health spokesman Mr Alan Shatter accused the Minister of "engaging in an unprecedented breach of faith" by issuing a statement after meeting Board members on Wednesday. Mr Cowen had said the Deloitte and Touche report "indicates serious governance and general management problems at the hospital".
However, according to Mr Shatter, the Minister should "consider his position", claiming that Mr Cowen and the Board agreed there should be no public statement "pending a further meeting taking place". "The strategy was to point the finger at the Board as solely responsible and to target them for the blame," he added.
Mr Shatter called on the Minister to confirm or deny whether the report found that funding of the new hospital should have been run on different, more appropriate principles.
The Democratic Left spokeswoman on health, Ms Liz McManus, said there was a "clear obligation" on the Minister to immediately publish the report.
"The report was paid for by the people, for the people and the people have a right to know what is in it," she said.