Minister for Health Mary Harney has described as "unacceptable" the fact that cancer patients can wait up to 18 months for a crucial tests.
Data, revealed by The Irish Timeson Saturday, shows patients can wait up to 18 months for a colonoscopy examination at Portlaoise General Hospital, up to 12 months at Tullamore General Hospital or University College Hospital Galway, and up nine months at Limerick Regional Hospital or Kerry General Hospital.
Mary O'Rourke describing the HSE
Speaking at an event to mark the 100,000th patient to have used the National Treatment Purchase Fund, Ms Harney said: "We have vastly enhanced the number of consultants across cancer care and other specialities. We should see huge improvements in those waiting times.
But she added: "It is not acceptable to me and it is not acceptable to the cancer control programme that patients would have to wait for such long periods before initial diagnosis because we know with cancer in particular early diagnosis is very important if we are to get good outcomes."
Reacting to the waiting-time figures, Fianna Fáil TD Mary O'Rourke said the HSE was "a mystery wrapped up in an enigma, wrapped up in something else."
Speaking on Newstalk 106 at lunchtime today, she added: "They don't seem to be responsible to the Minister, they don't seem to be responsible to the Department of Health; they're certainly not responsible to us as elected Dáil people.
"You're told you'll get an answer and maybe seven or eight weeks later you may get a reply and this is again sometimes quite difficult to understand. So they have been given huge powers, and we gave it as politicians, and we shouldn't have had, because the powers and the cash are impenetrable and one can't get at what is happening."
Labour's spokeswoman on health Jan O'Sullivan described Ms Harney's comments as "unbelievably hypocritical".
"Ms Harney is not some disinterested observer, but the Minister who has held political responsibility for the health service for three and half years and whose Government has determined health policy since 1997," she said.
Fine Gael health spokesman Dr James Reilly said Ms Harney had assumed the role of spectator. "We have a health system that's drowning but the Minister thinks her job is to describe the water," he said.
The failure to provide sufficient beds meant hospitals were always at maximum capacity with overcrowded A&Es and cancelled operations, he added.
The hospitals in question said patients marked as in urgent need of the internal bowel examination by their referring GP are seen much faster - within a matter of days or weeks - and that only those who are classed routine referrals have to wait for long periods.
However, a woman who attended her doctor last November and who was referred to the Mater hospital for a colonoscopy told Saturday's Irish Timesthat she won't be seen for the examination until April, some five months after first presenting to her doctor, even though her symptoms include bleeding that suggests her case could be urgent.