The Health Service Executive's approach to cuts is counter-productive and disappointing, Siptu national industrial secretary Matt Merrigan told the union’s nursing conference in Sligo today.
Mr Merrigan also criticised opposition politicians who were more interested in making "cheap points" than addressing serious issues.
"Much of the rhetoric by right wing politicians such as Leo Varadkar of Fine Gael is simply aimed at making cheap points rather than addressing serious issues of reform," Mr Merrigan said.
"The reality is that much of our health service is already over-extended because of a deliberate policy of outsourcing over many years and filling front line activities such as nursing through agencies."
"It is of course a lot easier to reduce expenditure by cutting front line staff who do not have permanent employment contracts but the end result impacts directly on the patient," he added.
Mr Merrigan said that reform was simply a "code word" for critics such as Mr Varadkar for bashing public sector workers and trying to suggest that if there were not so many of them all economic problems would be solved.
"If Mr Varadkar is not prepared to confront the much bigger problem of how to work with us on eradicating the waste created by a two tier health system and the cost to the Exchequer of tax breaks to developers to increase public dependence on private health care, then public sector workers are not going to give much credence to
his remarks."
"His recipe will result in fewer nurses, fewer care assistants and other grades, resulting in more people on trolleys in A&E and longer queues for basic elective procedures," he said.
Mr Merrigan also criticised figures in a leaked HSE document suggesting that absenteeism in the health sector is double the private sector average.
“Quite apart from the fact that the figures only relate to January, when sickness rates are at an annual high, they ignore the fact that the personnel concerned are often working in highly infectious environments and undertaking shift work, including extended night shifts, which can seriously undermine the immune system," he said.