The Government will come under pressure in the Dáil this week to explain why its plan to provide a network of radiotherapy services for cancer patients could be delayed by up to four years.
Fine Gael is to use private members time to raise the issue after it emerged last week that it is likely to be another eight years before the network of centres, announced in 2005, is completed.
Minister for Health Mary Harney had promised the network would be delivered by 2011. But a review of the project has found it is unlikely to be delivered before 2015.
Meanwhile there are huge gaps in the availability of radiotherapy across the State and prostate cancer patients can be waiting up to five months for radiotherapy.
Last week HSE chief executive Prof Brendan Drumm conceded the plan could not be delivered on time and blamed the delay on the fact that it was to be delivered by way of a complex public private partnership (PPP) arrangement.
Ms Harney said a day later she did not accept this, that she was insisting on the project being delivered on time and that if it couldn't be done by the public sector she would consider handing it over entirely to private providers.
But a report sent to Ms Harney last year stated there was consensus between the Department of Health, the National Development Finance Agency and the HSE that the target date of 2011 for delivering the project by way of PPP could not be met. She appears not to accept this.
Fine Gael's health spokesman Dr James Reilly said his party would raise the issue in the Dáil. He said more than 7,000 people die from cancer each year and radiotherapy plays a significant role in reducing deaths.
Meanwhile Prof John Armstrong, chairman of the Irish Cancer Society, has said public patients waiting for radiotherapy should be able to be referred to private facilities, where their treatment could be State-funded.