Labour has called for the introduction of universal health insurance to provide a comprehensive service that treats everyone equally. The party's health spokeswoman, Ms Liz McManus, said radical reform was needed because the current system was failing so many.

She introduced a debate on health in which her party colleagues outlined cases of patients whom the system had failed through waiting lists and insensitive treatment.

"We have a system that is characterised by instability, inequality and inefficiencies," Ms McManus said. There had to be a significant increase in healthcare investment. The Republic had the fastest growth rate in the EU, yet in terms of health spending it was at the bottom of the European league. Germany spent 10 per cent of GDP on health, while Britain spent 8 per cent, but the Republic's spending was just 5.5 per cent in 1998.

Ms McManus, opening the first health debate for the new Minister, Mr Martin, said a properly designed universal health insurance system "will ensure the stability within the system as well as the equality within the system which are lacking at present. It will also create a dynamic which hospitals are denied because of the strict budgetary controls that exist at present and which lead to closed wards and blocked beds."

Ms McManus said: "Equality must be a fundamental guiding principle in access to healthcare for every individual regardless of income, of geographic location or social status, and excellence must be the key in terms of the quality of that care".

Mr Martin, however, spent much of his speech rejecting Opposition criticisms of the Government's health policy. He said: "The Government has already put in place a range of programme improvements and funding expansion which mean that today there are more people being treated by the health services, there are more people employed in the health service and there are more capital projects under way than at any time in the history of the Irish health services."

He said Labour wanted the House to support a health insurance system which they had not costed nor set out in detail.