Taoiseach Enda Kenny has backed the Minister for Health's warning that a high- level public servant will have to be sacked "for accountability" if the hospital trolley crisis is not fixed.
Leo Varadkar issued the warning in an internal email sent three weeks ago.
Mr Kenny told the Dáil it was realistic to expect from any minister for health there was not an endless pit of money from taxpayers to deal with any situation.
“With an over-run every year for the past 30 years, perhaps it is time the Minister signals he is going to require accountability and responsibility be accepted by those who are in those positions,” he said.
The Taoiseach said the Minister for Health was warning he was not content to have a situation where, year-after-year, a budget was agreed but never met.
“What I see here, for the first time, is a Minister for Health saying: ‘We have got to have accountability for taxpayers’ money and the services we run here,’” he added.
The Minister, said Mr Kenny, was saying he was not happy with the way things were being run and that he needed people to step up the mark and take responsibility.
Fianna Fáil leader Micheál Martin said accountability should lie with the Minister who, he claimed, was seeking the heads of those whose advice he consistently ignored.
"Waiting lists have gone through the roof, Taoiseach," Mr Martin said. "Waiting times, patients on trolleys, 400,000 on the outpatient list now."
Mr Martin suggested what was now being witnessed was “appalling cynicism” from the Government and Mr Varadkar on his stewardship on health in the lead-up to a general election campaign. He said the Government would sack civil servants to save its political hide.
Mr Kenny said Mr Martin was “the champion of false anger”. He said Mr Martin, as minister for health in 2002, had pledged to end waiting lists.
Meanwhile, Mr Varadkar told journalists yesterday he was not looking for heads to roll but rather for people to implement plans that had been agreed to tackle the hospital trolley crisis.
He said he did not have the power to dismiss anyone but it was important that officials, executives, hospital clinical directors and directors of nursing, as well as everyone else with responsibility, were held to account.
Mr Varadkar said there was a named person in charge of each of the actions that had to be carried out under the new implementation plan.