The leader of the State’s biggest union believes the Government is intent on "further privatising the health service".
SIPTU president Mr Des Geraghty has also warned his union will step up a campaign launched last February if major reforms are not instituted.
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The ongoing campaign has enlisted the support of around 8,000 people such as members of other unions, doctors, patients, voluntary organisations and community groups. They have been lobbying public representatives over the issue for the past three months.
Mr Geraghty, who is hoping to win a seat in the upcoming Seanad elections, said the Government appears less committed to delivering on its pre-election promise of a world-class health service now the general election is over.
"Although the state of the health service was a key issue in the General Election, the Government seems to be approaching the crisis far less urgently now that the heat of battle has abated", Mr Geraghty said.
He also hit out at the recently published Programme for Government which, he says, fails to address the need to abolish the two-tier health service.
He criticised the Progressive Democrats’ Treatment Purchase Scheme which proposes that patients will be treated in hospitals abroad if they cannot secure treatment within a reasonable period of time in Ireland.
"There is a perverse logic to this proposal because now that the Government has driven nurses and other health professionals out of this country to work abroad by failing to address the shambolic state of our health service, they are now proposing to send the patients after them.
"It is ironic that many of the patients who are likely to be exported for treatment under this scheme may end up being treated by Irish nursing and medical staff working abroad."
He said money that should be spent enhancing the health service will instead be spent improving services in other countries and could be encouraging the expansion of private hospitals in Ireland.
"Are we in fact looking at a situation where private medicine will actually expand capacity in return for a guarantee of further State contracts through the Treatment Purchase Scheme - in effect, privatising the health service even further? I have no doubt that this is the real agenda as far as the Progressive Democrat wing of the Government is concerned."