The list of major reforms recommended for the health service by the inquiry led by Prof Niamh Brennan should not be regarded as "the Ten Commandments", former Taoiseach, Mr John Bruton has warned.
Prof Brennan, the chairwoman of the Commission on Financial Management in the Health Service, has made a series of "insistent demands", he said, on the Department of Health and the Minister for Health, Mr Martin, to speed up implementation of the recommendations.
Meanwhile, the Minister for Health is tomorrow expected to publish the Hanly Report, which favours downgrading smaller district hospitals, following the approval of the Cabinet today.
Though Mr Bruton said he agreed with many of the changes recommended by Prof Brennan, he said her calls "should not blind us to the possibility that this report is not necessarily equivalent to the Ten Commandments".
"The diagnosis in the report is excellent. Its criticisms are direct and frank and that is a good thing," he said, adding it was "acutely embarrassing" for the former Minister for Health, Mr Cowen, now Minister for Foreign Affairs. "It shows how ill-planned was his decision to grant medical cards to all over 70 years of age, which he estimated before the last election would cost €19 million a year and is now actually costing €55 million," Mr Bruton declared.
However, the Brennan Report favours "a highly centralised health service", he warned. "It proposes to introduce a semi-state body to run the service. In other words, it proposes that we have a glorified CIÉ for the health service.
The CIÉ model may have its merits but the experience with it has been less than perfect, he noted.
Mr Bruton said: "(It) is full of proposals for better reporting requirements, better controls, better projections etc. These were the methods used by the centrally planned economies (like the Soviet Union) to compete with the West. They did not achieve a marked success."