Sinn Féin has launched a week-long "Health for All" campaign. National chairwoman Mary Lou McDonald said the campaign would start with a protest outside Wexford General Hospital today and there would be similar protests throughout the week.
"Sinn Féin is absolutely opposed to the use of public finances to act as a support for private hospital developments [and] for-profit medical facilities." She added: "In a post-election scenario, we will use whatever influence we have and whatever bargaining power we have to ensure that those contracts for co-location and that whole direction of privatising the health service is brought to a halt."
The party will issue a "pledge card" setting out its priorities for the health services, including 3,000 extra beds, medical cards for persons under 18 and dealing with MRSA.
Sinn Féin president Gerry Adams said: "We are not interested in going into government for the sake of it. We are interested in going into government, provided we get a mandate, in order to further this type of radical programme on a common sense approach to health services and other public services, to continue with the work in terms of the peace process and also, as that continues to bed down, to continue to move towards a united, independent Ireland."