The chief executive of the Health Service Executive, Prof Brendan Drumm, admitted yesterday that radiotherapy facilities could be provided faster across the State if they were not funded through public/private partnership (PPP).
He was responding to the news that it is likely to be another eight years before the Government's plan to provide a complete network of radiotherapy services for cancer patients across the State is finally delivered.
A €500 million plan announced in 2005, to be funded by way of PPP, is not now likely to be delivered until 2015. The original deadline was 2011.
Prof Drumm told a press briefing in Dublin there was no doubt that PPP was a more difficult way to deliver anything, but on the plus side it generated the funds for the project.
"But the problem is if we didn't go PPP would we ever have got the money to do it?" he asked.
If the money for the plan had been taken from the HSE's capital budget, it would have been delivered quicker, he said, but it was not that simple, as "something else would suffer then".
Opposition parties sharply criticised Minister for Health Mary Harney for presiding over delays in seeing the plan implemented.
Fine Gael health spokesman Brian Hayes said that the Minister had announced, with great fanfare, a plan which was not backed by the necessary planning and preparation and, as a result, treatment for cancer sufferers was being unacceptably delayed.
Labour health spokeswoman Liz McManus said that the Government was wed to the notion of increasing private sector involvement in the delivery of health, but it had contributed to this project being delayed.
Sinn Féin health spokesman Caoimhghín Ó Caoláin said that the delay in the provision of radiotherapy services was a bigger scandal than anything before the tribunals, as it was costing lives.
Jane Bailey, of the South-East Cancer Foundation, said that serious questions had to be asked about whether political commitment existed to ensure the roll-out of better cancer services.
Meanwhile, on the threat by unions representing 100,000 health service workers not to co-operate with the HSE's cost-cutting plans, Prof Drumm said he was bewildered and taken aback by their response.
The cost-cutting plans - which include a blanket ban on recruitment this month and some bed closures - are an attempt by the HSE to reduce its financial deficit, which was running at €245 million at the end of July.
The unions, which have told members not to undertake extra duties during the recruitment freeze, are considering work stoppages or public demonstrations.
Prof Drumm said: "We will absolutely minimise any impact on patient care and that will demand a lot of flexibility from our staff in terms of saying 'yes, we can move somebody from one job to another in the short term, over a period of one month, when we are uncertain about recruitment', and I would have thought that's the type of flexibility I'd be seeing coming from the unions' side rather than actually in the context of where we are talking about a 1 to 2 per cent efficiency drive really taking actions that would actually impose hardship on patients."
He admitted that elective patient services would have to be reduced but said that the HSE was only paid "for a specific block of elective work each year" and could not provide more than this.
Asked if he should have accepted a bonus of €80,000 at a time of cutbacks, he did not answer the question directly.
But he said that nobody could accuse him of taking up his post for money. "I could go back . . . into medical practice any day you want, and I can tell you my family and I would be a hell of a lot happier in terms of the challenges I take on every day, and I can tell you they'd be exceptionally happy with my income," he said.