The Minister for Health, Mr Martin, yesterday shrugged off suggestions that too many people were employed in the health service.
The sector has 96,000 employees and paying them accounts for 70 per cent of health spending each year, leaving little to develop patient services.
Mr Martin said an extra 30,000 people had been employed in the health service since 1997 but he insisted they were needed. They included 6,000 extra nurses and 400 extra social workers, he said. "It's a labour-intensive sector by definition," he said.
"I don't think there are too many people working in the health service and I think there has been an over-simplistic analysis of that. One only has to go into a hospital ward to see the different roles and so on and the numbers of people in a hospital ward but all are required," he added.
Referring to a report in yesterday's Irish Independent that there were thousands more workers in the sector than were ever authorised, he said this had been the situation but it had now been regularised. He added that this was old news. Details of the anomaly had been published in the so-called "Three Wise Men" report on Budget day. "That has been in the news media for quite some time," he said.
However, he said the anomaly raised issues about checks within the system and employment controls. A new computerised system had been put in place which would ensure employment ceilings were adhered to in future, he added.
Mr Martin was speaking to reporters in Dublin when he attended the launch of guidelines for employers on how to accommodate equal opportunities and diversity in the health service, drawn up by the Health Service Employers' Agency. (HSEA).
Commenting on the guidelines, the HSEA's chief executive, Mr Gerard Barry, instanced the many nurses in the health service who were from the Philippines. Employers would have to realise that birthdays in the Philippines, for example, were a major day of celebration and staff usually took the day off.