Public patients will get a better deal from the Government's plans to encourage developers to build private hospitals on the grounds of public hospitals, Tánaiste Mary Harney said.
Defending the plan, Ms Harney, speaking at the opening of the Progressive Democrats' annual conference in Limerick last night, said it would increase the number of beds available for public patients.
"Let me say this as clearly as I can; this is about freeing up public beds for public patients. It increases the number of public beds in our country. It decreases the number of private beds in public hospitals," she told some of the 800 PD delegates.
Rejecting Labour's charge that she is intent on privatising healthcare, she said: "This could hardly be more wrong. If the plan were to get the private sector to run public hospitals - as happens in Sweden - they might have a point. Somehow I think that if they had thought of the idea first it would have been labelled as something entirely different."
The State has paid the full cost of providing 2,500 beds for private healthcare patients out of the 13,255 beds available in public hospitals, and it subsidises those private beds to the tune of 40 per cent.
"We effectively have been running State-funded hospitals like airplanes with business class, with the pilots getting a special fee for each business-class customer, whether or not they sit in a business-class seat," she said.
So far, she said, "all the evidence" is that private investors are willing to plough money into building private hospitals.
"With €8 billion estimated as likely to flow out of the country into foreign property, I see every reason to encourage a portion of that to be invested in hospitals at home," the Tánaiste went on.
Dealing with the major problems evident in accident and emergency services, she acknowledged the need for improvements.
However, she cautioned that the situation is not the same throughout the State. "There are 35 hospitals with A&E departments in the country. Not every hospital has A&E problems.
"Many provide very effective services. Where problems exist, not every hospital has the same problem. Different solutions are, therefore, required for each hospital. The bottom line for us is that no old person should have to sleep overnight on a trolley in a corridor. This has to stop and I am determined that it will."
Pushing for major reforms in hospitals, she said they must use expensively provided equipment more efficiently. "For example, X-ray machines in busy hospitals should be routinely used for patients during lunch-breaks, in the evenings and at weekends.
"The rules and work practices which applied in the past have to be reformed," she said, adding that taxpayers have the right to expect practical improvements "without a big price".
"If the private sector can supply diagnostics like X-rays and CT scans, let us use that too. Whatever works for the patients has to be the rule for us all."