The Irish Hospital Consultants' Association (IHCA) has added its voice to the growing wave of condemnation over the Government’s decision with withhold €15 million from the National Treatment Purchase Fund (NTPF).
In a statement today, the association said the money should be immediately reallocated to areas of the acute hospital services where it claimed patients are being denied urgent treatment due to the lack of facilities.
Sinn Féin have described the NTPF as a sticking plaster solution to the waiting list crisis in the run-up to the general election and said the decision to take back funding was a farce.
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Mr Caoimhghín Ó Caoláin echoed the sentiments of the IHCA, saying the €15 million should be reallocated to improve the direct provision of hospital services.
"Coming on top of the increase in the cost of medicines, higher fees for hospital visits and for VHI, these latest cuts make a mockery of the Government’s Health Strategy, which is now in tatters," he said.
Fine Gael's spokeswoman for health and children, Ms Olivia Mitchell, said the Government and the Minister for Health were trying to fool the public with the cynical manipulation of figures.
She said the withdrawal of funds from the NTPF was a cutback and an example of the "monumental deceit that was perpetrated in the run up to the general election".
The Department of Health confirmed last night €15 million of the €25 million set aside for the fund was being used to help it reach its cutbacks target set by the Minister for Finance.
The NTPF was established to offer private treatment to 10,000 public patients by the end of 2003 to cut waiting lists and was a key element of the Government’s National Health Strategy. The fund is to buy spare capacity in private hospitals in the State and to send patients for treatment in Northern Ireland and Britain.
In a statement today, Ms Mitchell said: "Now the Government and Mr Martin have the audacity to try to con us into believing they have been unable to spend all of the original fund, that no more private beds are available in Europe. Are we really meant to swallow that?"
Labour leader Mr Ruairí Quinn described the move as perhaps the "single most hypocritical cut carried out by the Government since its re-election".
"It is becoming clearer day-by-day that the Fianna Fáil and Progressive Democrats election campaigns amount to no more than an exercise in deceit and dishonesty," he said.
But the project manager of the NTPF, Ms Maureen Lynott, told The Irish Timesthere was no question of a cutback, and said the €15 million was money that had not been spent.
The Taoiseach dismissed claims that the Government is introducing cutbacks as "nonsense and scaremongering." He said the Government would meet all its commitments and had rearranged its spending commitments to ensure it delivered all it had promised.