The cost of taxis for the National Treatment Purchase Fund was under €4 for each patient treated, the Minister for Health told the Dáil.
Rejecting a claim that €600 was spent on a taxi to send a patient requiring minor eye surgery from Dublin to Limerick for treatment, Mary Harney said: "The procedure . . . was not minor eye surgery as it required the patient to have a general anaesthetic and to stay overnight in hospital".
She told Labour's health spokeswoman Liz McManus that "transport was decided having regard to patient safety and best medical practice. There was no taxi fare of €600."
Ms McManus called on the Minister to accept that there were "question marks over the national treatment purchase fund" and whether it offered value for money.
"We know now that 36 per cent of cases were seen in public hospitals, which means in effect that those hospitals were paid twice to look after patients," she said.
Ms McManus said the Minister should ensure the Comptroller and Auditor General requested a full review of the national treatment fund, but Ms Harney said the C&AG was currently auditing the fund's accounts for 2004 and "it is a matter for him to decide which State organisations or State-funded programmes are to be the subject of value-for-money audits".
The Minister said: "In general, the number of patients that require transport is small, and the cost of taxis to the NTPF last year was under €4 per patient".
Up to the end of September this year a total of 12,000 patients had been treated, while more than 35,000 had been treated since the fund was established.
But Ms McManus said that there had been a number of cases where patients were approached by the NTPF, but when they were directed towards a hospital they were denied care.
"One was a constituent of mine," she said.
But Ms Harney said that when the fund arranged treatments for people, they proceeded unless there was some medical or other reason they could not, not a lack of funding".
